UHZ1, a record breaking galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away, seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age. UHZ1 is puzzling in view of it harboring a supermassive black hole that could not have possibly been seeded even by regular stars, in view of its mass and very little time for the BH to grow. As such, UHZ1 is believed to be evidence for supermassive stars that, upon collapse, generate the supermassive black hole powering the quasar at its center. In this study, the authors show how UHZ1 could harbor a supermassive black hole seeded by the collapse of a dark star. The mechanisms identified by the authors are not restricted to UHZ1 — it provides a pathway for explaining over massive black hole galaxies, of which UHZ1 is a prominent example.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Ákos Bogdán; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & K. Arcand
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & K. Arcand
A recent study by scientists from Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas at Austin, led by Assistant Professor Cosmin Ilie, has provided answers to three long-standing puzzles concerning the earliest stages in the formation of the Universe. The picture now emerging stands in stark contrast to the account of cosmic origins found in the Bible.
Quite apart from the hopelessly inaccurate Biblical description of the Universe as consisting of a small, flat Earth capped by a solid dome to which the Sun, Moon, and stars were attached, we are also presented with an equally implausible account of how the Universe supposedly came into being. Far from reflecting divine insight, the narrative reads as the best guess of Bronze Age storytellers attempting to make sense of the world from a position of near-total ignorance of physics and chemistry.
The sequence begins with the creation of light, which at least has the merit of vaguely echoing the fact that, from the earliest moments after the Big Bang, the Universe was dominated by electromagnetic radiation. But matters rapidly unravel. The Biblical account then invokes the separation of land and water—both of which would require atoms and molecules of specific elements. None of these elements could have existed at that time, as they were only forged much later inside stars formed from primordial clouds of hydrogen and helium. Elements such as oxygen, silicon, iron, and aluminium—essential constituents of water and rock—simply did not yet exist.
Even after heavy elements had been created, land could only arise through the formation of planetary systems from the accretion discs of second- or third-generation stars. Yet the Bible places land and water in existence immediately after the creation of light, with no explanation of their origin. The authors clearly assumed these features had always been present because they were part of the familiar world they inhabited. Unaware of atoms, molecules, or stellar nucleosynthesis, they simply imagined their creator working with pre-existing materials.
The result is a confused and self-contradictory narrative: a creator god who allegedly made everything, yet inexplicably relied on materials that must either have existed eternally or have been created earlier, with no account of how or when this occurred. Far from being profound, the story collapses into paradox and incoherence under even minimal scientific scrutiny.
By contrast with this naïve and internally inconsistent creation myth, modern cosmology—supported by sophisticated observational tools such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—is steadily assembling a coherent, evidence-based account of how the Universe actually formed and evolved.
Background^ The Formation of the Universe — Key Stages and Timeline.The team’s work and the significance of their findings are outlined in a Colgate University news release via EurekAlert!~13.8 billion years ago — The Big Bang
The Universe began in an extremely hot, dense state. Space itself expanded rapidly; this was not an explosion in space, but an expansion of space. The earliest moments are described by well-tested physics, though quantum gravity effects remain an open area of research.
10⁻³⁶ to 10⁻³² seconds — Inflation
A brief period of exponential expansion smoothed out the Universe, explaining its large-scale uniformity and the tiny density fluctuations that later grew into galaxies.
First few minutes — Primordial nucleosynthesis
As the Universe cooled, protons and neutrons combined to form the first atomic nuclei: mainly hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of lithium. No heavier elements could form at this stage.
~380,000 years — Recombination and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
Electrons combined with nuclei to form the first neutral atoms, allowing light to travel freely through space. This radiation is still detectable today as the CMB, providing a detailed snapshot of the young Universe.
~100–200 million years — The first stars (Population III)
Gravity caused dense regions of gas to collapse, forming the first generation of stars. These stars were massive, short-lived, and crucial: they forged the first heavy elements inside their cores.
~500 million–1 billion years — First galaxies and reionisation
Stars grouped into early galaxies. Ultraviolet radiation from these objects reionised the surrounding hydrogen, making the Universe transparent again. 1–9 billion years — Chemical enrichment and structure formation
Successive generations of stars produced heavier elements via stellar fusion and supernovae. Galaxies grew, merged, and evolved into the large-scale cosmic web observed today.
~4.6 billion years ago — Formation of the Solar System
Our Sun formed from a cloud enriched by earlier stellar generations. Rocky planets, including Earth, could only exist because heavy elements had already been produced over billions of years.
Present day — An expanding Universe
The Universe continues to expand, with observations showing that this expansion is accelerating, driven by dark energy. Modern telescopes now allow astronomers to observe galaxies forming only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Why this matters.
This timeline is supported by multiple, independent lines of evidence: cosmic background radiation, elemental abundances, stellar physics, galaxy surveys, and precise measurements of cosmic expansion. Together, they form a coherent and predictive account of cosmic history—one that bears no resemblance to short-timescale or pre-scientific creation narratives.
Dark stars could help solve three pressing puzzles of the high-redshift universe
A recent study led by Colgate Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Cosmin Ilie, in collaboration with Jillian Paulin ’23 at the University of Pennsylvania, Andreea Petric of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Katherine Freese of the University of Texas at Austin, provides answers to three seemingly disparate, yet pressing, cosmic dawn puzzles. Specifically, the authors show how dark stars could help explain the unexpected discovery of “blue monster” galaxies, the numerous early overmassive black hole galaxies, and the “little red dots” in images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The first stars in the universe form in dark matter–rich environments, at the centers of dark matter microhalos. Roughly a few hundred million light-years after the Big Bang, molecular clouds of hydrogen and helium cooled sufficiently well to begin a process of gravitational collapse, which eventually led to the formation of the first stars. This phenomenon marked the beginning of the cosmic dawn era, a period offering the right conditions for the formation of stars powered by dark matter annihilations, also known as dark stars. Those objects can grow to become supermassive, and are natural seeds for supermassive black holes.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observed the most distant objects yet to be studied, and those discoveries pose significant challenges to standard models of the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Specifically, a large fraction of the most distant galaxies are now categorized as “blue monsters,” i.e., extremely bright, yet ultra-compact and almost devoid of dust. The existence of such galaxies was extremely unexpected, as no pre-JWST era simulations or theoretical models of the formation of the first galaxies predicted their existence.
Moreover, the JWST data further exacerbate the problem of the seeds for larger-than-expected supermassive black holes (SMBHs) powering the most distant quasars ever observed. Lastly, JWST has observed a whole new class of objects, including “little red dots” (LRDs), which are very compact, dustless cosmic dawn sources which unexpectedly emit little to no X-ray radiation.
Those three puzzles, combined, indicate that the commonly accepted pre-JWST models for the formation of the first galaxies and first supermassive black holes require significant refinements.
Some of the most significant mysteries posed by the JWST’s cosmic dawn data are in fact features of the dark star theory.
Assistant Professor Cosmin Ilie, lead author
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Colgate University
Hamilton, NY, USA.
While dark stars are yet to be confirmed experimentally, this recent publication adds a significant piece to the existing evidence: photometric and spectroscopic candidates, which were discovered in two separate PNAS studies published in 2023 and 2025, respectively. In addition to discussing in-depth mechanisms via which dark stars could provide solutions to the mysteries posed by the blue monsters, little red dots, and overmassive black hole galaxies, this work also presents the most up-to-date spectroscopic analysis, finding evidence for dark star smoking-gun absorption features due to helium in the spectra of JADES-GS-13-0, in addition to the one previously found for JADES-GS-14-0.
Dark stars are some of the most exciting astrophysical objects to possibly exist, as their study would allow for a determination of the physical properties of the dark matter particle, and thus complement the vast experimental efforts for the detection of dark matter in laboratories on Earth, via direct detection or particle production.
Publication:
What emerges from this work is not a Universe conjured instantaneously from nothing by divine fiat, but one whose structure, composition, and evolution are governed by discoverable physical laws operating over immense spans of time. The stages identified by cosmologists—from inflation and primordial nucleosynthesis to star formation and chemical enrichment—form a coherent, testable sequence that explains not only what we observe today, but why the Universe could not possibly have formed in the way imagined by Bronze Age storytellers.
Crucially, this account is not built on authority or tradition, but on evidence: background radiation mapped in exquisite detail, elemental abundances measured across the cosmos, and galaxies observed at progressively earlier stages of their evolution. Each new observation refines the model rather than overturning it, strengthening a framework that has repeatedly made accurate predictions—something no creation myth has ever achieved.
The contrast could not be sharper. The Biblical creation narrative reflects the assumptions and limitations of its time, embedding the everyday world of its authors into a cosmology that collapses under modern scrutiny. Contemporary cosmology, by contrast, demonstrates how far human understanding has progressed once evidence replaces intuition, and measurement replaces myth. The Universe revealed by science is vastly older, more complex, and more fascinating than anything imagined by its ancient chroniclers—and it is precisely because it is grounded in reality that it continues to yield its secrets.
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