Description:

JWST has shown us that the galaxy population in the high redshift Universe is richer and more complex than we had anticipated. Among the surprising findings is the presence of seemingly massive and very compact galaxies when the Universe was only ~600 Myr old. It has been suggested that they "break" the Universe, in the sense that they should not have been able to form this early. The talk will review these early studies and follow-up work, and try to differentiate between results that are firm and those that are still uncertain. One of the intriguing uncertainties is the role of black holes, both in the early phases of galaxy formation and in the interpretation of observations.

Pieter van Dokkum, Professor, Yale University

Host: Allison Strom