Astronomers have discovered mysterious ‘UFO galaxies’ that appear as red, glowing disc-shaped objects in the darkness of space.
They found evidence of 56 ‘Ultra-red Flattened Objects’ after analyzing data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which had eluded older telescopes, such as Hubble, for decades.
The UFO galaxies were likely hidden by clouds of dust and debris surrounding them, masking the light from their inner galaxies.
However, JWST has advanced technology, such as infrared light detection, that allows it to capture stunning images of these glowing disks, which are located about a million light-years from Earth.
Based on these images and computer simulations, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) suggested that UFO galaxies are similar in size and shape to the Milky Way, but “much dustier.”
Lead author Justus Gibson said: ‘JWST allows us to see these kinds of galaxies that we could never have seen before.
“It tells us that maybe we didn’t understand the universe as well as we thought.”
Gibson also explained that UFO galaxies appear red because they emit very little visible light. Most of the light escaping from these galaxies is infrared radiation, and the small amount of visible light they emit is at the limit of what the human eye can detect.
Above, two images of the same region of space show how the ‘UFO galaxies’ evaded detection by previous telescopes. The top image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, failed to detect the infrared heat signal that the James Webb Space Telescope image below it picked up
Researchers have identified a total of 56 UFO galaxies – most likely hidden by dust and debris clouds that mask the light from their inner galaxies. Above are four more examples of infrared-emitting UFO galaxies that were hidden from Hubble (HST) but visible to James Webb (JWST)
A series of computer simulations, neural network emulators and mathematical models were used to determine the shapes of these large, red UFO galaxies.
The team concluded that they come in shapes such as classic ‘flying saucers’ (discs) and rugby ball-shaped ‘prolate spheroids’.
Each of these massive galaxies that emit red light and infrared radiation, the researchers discovered, contains roughly fifty times more dust than our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
Study co-author Erica Nelson commented: ‘Why on earth do these galaxies have so much more dust than all other galaxies? I got it.’
The researchers studied data from a large number of better-documented galaxies before feeling confident in their conclusion: the stars and planets in these UFO galaxies are hidden by thick clouds of dust.
The team painstakingly compared this data to the total mass of stars in each UFO galaxy (the stellar mass) and the changes in the quality of light and infrared radiation emitted at the center of each galaxy compared to its edges .
The results gave a clear indication that the faint red light emitted by these UFO galaxies is due to masking by dust and debris – and not the faint light that is thought to be typical of very distant galaxies billions of light years away. that they were formed during the earliest epochs of the universe.
“UFOs have red coloring all over their bodies, but still have slight negative color gradations, with edges that are less red than the interior,” the spokesperson said.
“These color gradients are likely caused by the increased central dust concentration and not by the age of the stellar populations,” they concluded in their study, published last October in The Astrophysical Journal.
Above, more examples of the 56 known UFO galaxies, with one relatively ‘dust-free’ galaxy at the top left, published by the researchers for comparison
Above, another bright red UFO galaxy captured by James Webb. “It tells us that maybe we didn’t understand the universe as well as we thought,” said study lead author Justus Gibson.
Changes in the gradients of red and infrared light, as well as similar measurements of nearby brighter and bluer galaxies, also helped the team estimate the rate at which new stars form in these UFO galaxies, another factor that could influence on the light they radiate.
‘The population of UFOs studied here is not an extreme object in terms of stellar mass, SFR [star formation rates]or redshift,” Gibson and his co-authors wrote.
So the once hidden UFOs were simply “thoroughly red objects whose optical weakness is largely caused by dust.”
“They are so visually striking,” said Nelson, an assistant professor of astrophysics at CU Boulder.
‘They are huge red disks that appear in these images, and they were completely unexpected. They make you say, ‘What? How?”
Three other ultramassive, red-light-emitting galaxies called “Red Monsters” – each nearly the size of the Milky Way – were also discovered this month, much further away from Earth and closer to the site of the Big Bang.
The international team of astronomers who published this finding used similar methods to determine that their infrared-radiating galaxies were most likely dust-free, giants far removed from Earth in both time and space.
Both the Red Monster and the UFO galaxies, the researchers noted, challenge current ideas about galaxy formation.
The Red Monsters show that galaxies formed much earlier than previously calculated, and the UFOs show that gravity may not be able to knit together all the matter that condenses a young galaxy into neatly defined planets and stars, leaving a lot of dust and debris behind.
“They make you say, ‘What? How?” said Dr. Nelson. ‘They are so visually striking […] They are huge red discs that appear in these images, and they were completely unexpected.’