{"id":188920,"date":"2026-03-13T04:47:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T03:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/cosmic-dawn-center-nappede-forsiden-af-nature-i-januar-her-fortaeller-de-hvordan\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T10:57:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T09:57:46","slug":"astrophysicists-solved-mystery-of-red-dots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/astrophysicists-solved-mystery-of-red-dots\/","title":{"rendered":"Astrophysicists solved mystery of red dots"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span> new phenomenon set the world\u2019s astrophysicists and other researchers abuzz in June 2022.<\/p>\n

The James Webb telescope, the largest and most complex telescope ever sent into space, began transmitting images to researchers on Earth.<\/p>\n

In them, there were some small reddish spots that no one could explain, but which scientists immediately named Little Red Dots<\/em>, or LRDs.<\/p>\n

Were they young galaxies \u2014 or a previously unknown phenomenon in the early universe? The universe is now 13.8 billion years old, but by looking deep into space, the James Webb telescope also looks back in time \u2014 revealing objects as they appeared just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

Around 1,400 physicists from throughout the globe began studying the phenomenon. This included a dozen from the Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), and seven more researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK.<\/p>\n

Professor Darach Watson heads the LRD team at UCPH, which ended up solving the red dot enigma.<\/p>\n

Their work made the cover story of the journal Nature<\/em> in January 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The researchers spent a long time considering whether LRDs had anything to do with black holes, before they were finally able to prove that they, in fact, did.<\/p>\n

Archive was the turning point<\/h4>\n

An NBI colleague of Darach Watson, Associate Professor Gabriel Brammer, set up an archive in 2023 that contained all the available data from the James Webb telescope.<\/p>\n

The public archive has since become one of the centre\u2019s most important assets, and the images from the James Webb telescope showed light phenomena that all resembled the small red dots.
\n
\nResearchers at the Cosmic Dawn Center worked with the theory that the phenomena might be black holes right from the start. But the observations did not support it, as the LRDs gave off a constant light and did not emit the bluish hue that is normally observed in black holes. No X-ray radiation was emitted from them either \u2014 something that is normal for black holes.<\/p>\n

The small red dots could not be stars or quasars, and they were too small to be galaxies.<\/p>\n

The researchers were completely at a loss.<\/p>\n

READ ALSO:<\/strong> Astrophysicist honoured for uncovering black holes\u2019 orbital secrets<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Data shared and free<\/h4>\n

News of Gabriel Brammer\u2019s archive was shared with researchers throughout the world: In physics it is no advantage to keep your data to yourself.<\/p>\n

\u00bbBoth Gabriel Brammer, others, and I myself believe that the data should be freely available. There are arguments that we should keep it private so our PhD students have more time to work with them: But we believe that keeping data open is better, in spite of all the arguments against it,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n

A new scientist joined the project after it had already begun. This was PhD fellow Albert Sneppen, who also started working with the LRDs in the spring of 2025.<\/p>\n

There is simply something about the research setting that has everyone continuing to share their data, even though we work in a competitive environment that of course makes us ambitious<\/p>\n

Albert Sneppen<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Albert Sneppen works with advanced computer models and has developed the theoretical model that researchers now use to show what the red dots are revealing to them.<\/p>\n

Albert Sneppen appreciates that the research community in his field is open and democratic.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThere is simply something about the research setting that has everyone continuing to share their data, even though we work in a competitive environment that of course makes us ambitious. Everyone wants to be the first to come up with an answer,\u00ab says Albert Sneppen.<\/p>\n

Scientific staff at the Cosmic Dawn Center did, in fact, also made a determined effort to be the first<\/em> to solve the LRD mystery. This is why Russian postdoc Vadim Rusakov, who works on analysing the physics of gas and dust clouds, was attached to the project. It would have taken Darach Watson much longer to carry out that type of analysis himself, he explains.<\/p>\n

PhD fellow Georgios Nikopoulos also joined up, with his role being to find evidence supporting the researchers\u2019 hypotheses about the LRDs.<\/p>\n

\u00bbI used a catalogue of the red dots that I compiled based on the knowledge we gained from the James Webb telescope. I investigated whether they behaved according to the theoretical model that Albert Sneppen developed,\u00ab says Georgios Nikopoulos.<\/p>\n

READ ALSO: <\/strong>Black holes \u2014 and the physics and dreams of Albert<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Breakthrough by chance<\/h4>\n

The combined efforts of the Cosmic Dawn Center ultimately led to a breakthrough in understanding the red dots. But it happened almost by accident.<\/p>\n

Darach Watson had studied Gabriel Brammer\u2019s archive for some time when, in May 2024, he came across a scientific article about X-ray radiation and dust that gave him an aha moment:<\/p>\n

\u00bbThe article suggested that the LRDs might be black holes surrounded by hot gas, so that X-ray radiation could not escape through it. At first I thought that couldn\u2019t be right, because then no light could escape from the gas cloud either,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n

The electrons in the gas cloud would block all light if it were dense enough to block X-rays.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fine to discuss \u2014 and that is part of what makes physics fun<\/p>\n

Darach Watson<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But then Darach Watson suddenly realised that there could be two different types of opacity: One is absorption, where light is absorbed so that it disappears completely. The other is scattering, where light waves interact in many different directions with matter multiple times.<\/p>\n

\u00bbScattering could allow the light to escape, and you would be able to see this by studying the profile of colours or wavelengths in the light\u2019s spectrum. I calculated what that spectrum should look like, and then I looked for it in our data \u2014 and found it,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n

It remains a mystery to researchers how the LRDs were formed and what will eventually become of them. Researchers are still working on the phenomenon and, according to Darach Watson, more than one scientific article about them is now published every day.<\/p>\n

The scientific community may not end up coming to an agreement on how the supermassive holes formed so early in the universe. But that doesn’t matter, because in black holes research there is space for disagreement:<\/p>\n

\u00bbDebate is a good thing \u2014 and that is part of what makes physics fun,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n

READ ALSO:<\/strong> The Bohr legacy<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was first written in Danish and published on 10 March 2026. It has been translated into English and post-edited by Mike Young.<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research team at the Niels Bohr Institute cracked the enigma of red light sources in the early universe. 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","name":"dsc_4318-web","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":187661,"date":"2026-02-26 10:21:13","modified":"2026-03-06 14:10:53","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":2400,"height":1600,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-480x320.jpg","medium-width":480,"medium-height":320,"medium_large":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-768x512.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":512,"large":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-1280x853.jpg","large-width":1280,"large-height":853,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-1536x1024.jpg","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1024,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-2048x1365.jpg","2048x2048-width":2048,"2048x2048-height":1365,"featured-soft":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-290x193.jpg","featured-soft-width":290,"featured-soft-height":193,"featured-hard":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-290x180.jpg","featured-hard-width":290,"featured-hard-height":180,"narrow":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-700x467.jpg","narrow-width":700,"narrow-height":467,"extended":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318web-2-990x660.jpg","extended-width":990,"extended-height":660}},"style":"full","text_placement":"metadata-below","image_link_url":"","image_link_title":"","caption_prefix":"","enable_alternative_caption":true,"alternative_caption":"Four physicists bathed in red light on the Niels Bohr Building\u2019s skybridge. From left: Georgios Nikopoulos, Albert Sneppen, Darach Watson, and Gabriel Brammer."},{"acf_fc_layout":"Standfirst","subject":"Open research culture","text":"Ansatte p\u00e5 Niels Bohr Institutet var de f\u00f8rste til at l\u00f8se et mysterium om lysende prikker i universet - og internationalt samarbejde med andre af verdens fysikere var med til at kn\u00e6kke koden. \u00bbVigtigt, at vores data er frie,\u00ab siger professor Darach Watson. ","use_post_excerpt":true},{"acf_fc_layout":"Byline","is_author":true,"contributors":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">A<\/span> new phenomenon set the world\u2019s astrophysicists and other researchers abuzz in June 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The James Webb telescope, the largest and most complex telescope ever sent into space, began transmitting images to researchers on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>In them, there were some small reddish spots that no one could explain, but which scientists immediately named <em>Little Red Dots<\/em>, or LRDs.<\/p>\n<p>Were they young galaxies \u2014 or a previously unknown phenomenon in the early universe? The universe is now 13.8 billion years old, but by looking deep into space, the James Webb telescope also looks back in time \u2014 revealing objects as they appeared just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n<p>Around 1,400 physicists from throughout the globe began studying the phenomenon. This included a dozen from the Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), and seven more researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Darach Watson heads the LRD team at UCPH, which ended up solving the red dot enigma.<\/p>\n<p>Their work made the cover story of the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09900-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Nature<\/em> in January 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers spent a long time considering whether LRDs had anything to do with black holes, before they were finally able to prove that they, in fact, did.<\/p>\n<h4>Archive was the turning point<\/h4>\n<p>An NBI colleague of Darach Watson, Associate Professor Gabriel Brammer, set up an archive in 2023 that contained all the available data from the James Webb telescope.<\/p>\n<p>The public archive has since become one of the centre\u2019s most important assets, and the images from the James Webb telescope showed light phenomena that all resembled the small red dots.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Image","image":{"ID":188469,"id":188469,"title":"\u00c5bent forskermilj\u00f8 afsl\u00f8rede r\u00f8de prikker i det tidlige univers som massive sorte huller","filename":"coord150.0633272.354978.jpg","filesize":59815,"url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978.jpg","link":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/cosmic-dawn-center-nappede-forsiden-af-nature-i-januar-her-fortaeller-de-hvordan\/coord150-0633272-354978\/","alt":"","author":"8","description":"","caption":"Man kan se en lille, r\u00f8d, lysende prik i midten af billedet, der kun er et lille udsnit af universet, som det s\u00e5 ud 1,5 milliarder \u00e5r efter big bang. ","name":"coord150-0633272-354978","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":187661,"date":"2026-03-03 09:13:24","modified":"2026-03-10 13:19:01","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1200,"height":873,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-480x349.jpg","medium-width":480,"medium-height":349,"medium_large":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-768x559.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":559,"large":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978.jpg","large-width":1200,"large-height":873,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978.jpg","1536x1536-width":1200,"1536x1536-height":873,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978.jpg","2048x2048-width":1200,"2048x2048-height":873,"featured-soft":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-290x211.jpg","featured-soft-width":290,"featured-soft-height":211,"featured-hard":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-290x180.jpg","featured-hard-width":290,"featured-hard-height":180,"narrow":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-700x509.jpg","narrow-width":700,"narrow-height":509,"extended":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/coord150.0633272.354978-990x720.jpg","extended-width":990,"extended-height":720}},"style":"extended","text_placement":"metadata-below","image_link_url":"","image_link_title":"","caption_prefix":"","enable_alternative_caption":true,"alternative_caption":"A tiny glowing red dot can be seen at the centre of the image, which shows only a small portion of the universe as it looked 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang."},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p>Researchers at the Cosmic Dawn Center worked with the theory that the phenomena might be black holes right from the start. But the observations did not support it, as the LRDs gave off a constant light and did not emit the bluish hue that is normally observed in black holes. No X-ray radiation was emitted from them either \u2014 something that is normal for black holes.<\/p>\n<p>The small red dots could not be stars or quasars, and they were too small to be galaxies.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers were completely at a loss.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ ALSO:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/astrophysicist-honoured-for-uncovering-black-holes-orbital-secrets\/\"><em>Astrophysicist honoured for uncovering black holes\u2019 orbital secrets<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h4>Data shared and free<\/h4>\n<p>News of Gabriel Brammer\u2019s archive was shared with researchers throughout the world: In physics it is no advantage to keep your data to yourself.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbBoth Gabriel Brammer, others, and I myself believe that the data should be freely available. There are arguments that we should keep it private so our PhD students have more time to work with them: But we believe that keeping data open is better, in spite of all the arguments against it,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n<p>A new scientist joined the project after it had already begun. This was PhD fellow Albert Sneppen, who also started working with the LRDs in the spring of 2025.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is simply something about the research setting that has everyone continuing to share their data, even though we work in a competitive environment that of course makes us ambitious<\/p>\n<p class=\"quotee\">Albert Sneppen<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Albert Sneppen works with advanced computer models and has developed the theoretical model that researchers now use to show what the red dots are revealing to them.<\/p>\n<p>Albert Sneppen appreciates that the research community in his field is open and democratic.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThere is simply something about the research setting that has everyone continuing to share their data, even though we work in a competitive environment that of course makes us ambitious. Everyone wants to be the first to come up with an answer,\u00ab says Albert Sneppen.<\/p>\n<p>Scientific staff at the Cosmic Dawn Center did, in fact, also made a determined effort to be the <em>first<\/em> to solve the LRD mystery. This is why Russian postdoc Vadim Rusakov, who works on analysing the physics of gas and dust clouds, was attached to the project. It would have taken Darach Watson much longer to carry out that type of analysis himself, he explains.<\/p>\n<p>PhD fellow Georgios Nikopoulos also joined up, with his role being to find evidence supporting the researchers\u2019 hypotheses about the LRDs.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbI used a catalogue of the red dots that I compiled based on the knowledge we gained from the James Webb telescope. I investigated whether they behaved according to the theoretical model that Albert Sneppen developed,\u00ab says Georgios Nikopoulos.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ ALSO: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/black-holes-and-the-physics-and-dreams-of-albert\/\"><em>Black holes \u2014 and the physics and dreams of Albert<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h4>Breakthrough by chance<\/h4>\n<p>The combined efforts of the Cosmic Dawn Center ultimately led to a breakthrough in understanding the red dots. But it happened almost by accident.<\/p>\n<p>Darach Watson had studied Gabriel Brammer\u2019s archive for some time when, in May 2024, he came across a scientific article about X-ray radiation and dust that gave him an aha moment:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThe article suggested that the LRDs might be black holes surrounded by hot gas, so that X-ray radiation could not escape through it. At first I thought that couldn\u2019t be right, because then no light could escape from the gas cloud either,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n<p>The electrons in the gas cloud would block all light if it were dense enough to block X-rays.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s fine to discuss \u2014 and that is part of what makes physics fun<\/p>\n<p class=\"quotee\">Darach Watson<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But then Darach Watson suddenly realised that there could be two different types of opacity: One is absorption, where light is absorbed so that it disappears completely. The other is scattering, where light waves interact in many different directions with matter multiple times.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbScattering could allow the light to escape, and you would be able to see this by studying the profile of colours or wavelengths in the light\u2019s spectrum. I calculated what that spectrum should look like, and then I looked for it in our data \u2014 and found it,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n<p>It remains a mystery to researchers how the LRDs were formed and what will eventually become of them. Researchers are still working on the phenomenon and, according to Darach Watson, more than one scientific article about them is now published every day.<\/p>\n<p>The scientific community may not end up coming to an agreement on how the supermassive holes formed so early in the universe. But that doesn’t matter, because in black holes research there is space for disagreement:<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbDebate is a good thing \u2014 and that is part of what makes physics fun,\u00ab says Darach Watson.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ ALSO:<\/strong> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/the-bohr-legacy\/\">The Bohr legacy<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This article was first written in Danish and published on 10 March 2026. It has been translated into English and post-edited by Mike Young.<\/em><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"ArticleEnd"},{"acf_fc_layout":"Newsletter","lang_select":"en","identifier":"Newsletter","headline":"Get an email with upcoming events and top University of Copenhagen stories","button_text":"Sign up here","class":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"OtherStories","headline":"","hand_picked_posts":false,"references":false,"category":false,"theme":false,"number_of_posts":"4","style":"default"}]},"taxonomyData":{"category":[{"term_id":46,"name":"Science","slug":"science","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":46,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":830,"filter":"raw"}],"post_tag":[],"post_format":[],"expression":[{"term_id":15,"name":"News Article","slug":"news_article","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":15,"taxonomy":"expression","description":"","parent":0,"count":11485,"filter":"raw"}],"translation_priority":[{"term_id":5468,"name":"Optional","slug":"optional-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5468,"taxonomy":"translation_priority","description":"","parent":0,"count":671,"filter":"raw"}]},"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dsc_4318facebook-1280x668.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188920"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189000,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188920\/revisions\/189000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}