The James Webb Space Telescope has taken some of the most incredible images of the universe and provided vast amounts of information for scientists to unpack.

Recently, this powerful telescope spent time looking at one of the oldest regions of the observable universe and found something quite interesting. In the images were hundreds of galaxies that appeared as little red dots.

Astrophysicists have been trying to figure out exactly what they are ever since. This is proving difficult, however, because they appear as different things depending on how they are observed.

This is explained by Smithsonian Institution astrophysicist Fabio Pacucci in an interesting essay for The Conversation. In it, he says that the red dot structures are quite small on a galactic scale. They seem to be about 2% the size of the Milky Way.

One proposed theory is that they are an area of densely packed stars, being home to about the same number of stars as the Milky Way, despite the fact that it is just 2% its size. If this is the case it would be remarkable. Paucci says:

“These astrophysical objects may be the densest stellar environments in the entire universe.”

Another hypothesis is that each of the Little Red Dots is a supermassive black hole that is then surrounded by stars. The problem with this theory is that the black hole would have to be larger than what was previously believed to be possible.

Another interesting thing about these Little Red Dots is that they appear to only be present for a very short period of time, cosmically speaking. Astrophysicists say that they appeared around sometime between 600 and 800 million years after the Big Bang and lasted for about one billion years.

Additional research and theories are needed about these mysterious areas in the history of the Universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope often generates more questions than answers.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.