Little Red Dots, Big Open Questions

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has uncovered a mysterious population of extremely compact, red sources at high redshift – so-called "Little Red Dots" (LRDs). Found ubiquitously across JWST fields, these objects exhibit broad Balmer lines, peculiar V-shaped spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and a diversity of properties that challenge conventional classification. Are LRDs the earliest growing black holes with unprecedented gas densities? Or could they be massive, extremely compact galaxies whose stellar kinematics mimic broad-line emission? Despite extensive studies, a consensus has yet to emerge. I will discuss the current state and future directions of one of JWST’s most intriguing and debated discoveries.

A. Prof. Ivo Labbe

Ivo Labbe joined Swinburne in 2018. After earning a PhD from Leiden University, he was a Carnegie Fellow and a NASA/Hubble Fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena (USA), and faculty at Leiden observatory (NL).

His research interests span the formation of the first generations of galaxies, when the universe was only a few percent of its current age, their explosive buildup through cosmic time, and their demise when star formation activity ground to a sudden halt. The world's most powerful telescopes on Earth and in space (Hubble, Spitzer, Keck, Very Large Telescope, ALMA) are used to piece together these early chapters of cosmic history; a field soon to be revolutionized by the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Together with his collaborators in United States, Europe, and Swinburne, Labbe has broken the record for the most distant galaxy numerous times.