SL118: What are Little Red Dots?
David Noel
<davidn@aoi.com.au>
Ben Franklin Centre for Theoretical Research
PO Box 27, Subiaco, WA 6008, Australia.
Discovery of the "Little Red Dots"
According to [1]. "The early universe's "Little Red Dots" are still a big mystery". What are they? They are astronomical objects which have been observed using the unrivalled resolution of the James Webb Telescope.
Fig. SL118-F1. Little Red Dots. From [1].
These "LRDs" were reported on at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS 245), held from January 12-16, 2025. These are the same as the "universe-breaking" galaxies first reported roughly two years earlier, so-called because they are larger than scientists can explain at "so early a point in cosmic time -- less than a billion years after the Big Bang" [1].
"Scientists simply don't understand how so many stars and so much material can accumulate in so little time. When the news first broke, there were six of the objects. Now, JWST has revealed 341 of them" [1].
LRDs just a normal expectation, with a Real Universe view
In the current article it will be shown that LRDs are just as would be expected, if your view of the Universe is corrected from the faulty "Expanding Universe" view. In fact, their existence helps to demonstrate that the Big Bang / Expanding Universe paradigm is intrinsically faulty.
The evidence for this is given in "UG106: R.I.P. Expanding Universe (b. 1930, d. 2012) (The Big Bang never happened)" (Reference [A] ) . Full reasons for the death of the Expanding Universe idea are given in that reference, but one basic item is that the red-shifts of distant galaxies cannot be due to Doppler effects.
In fact, the vast majority of these galactic red-shifts are due to the Gravitational Drag suggested by Fritz Zwicky back in the 1930s. The shifts are exactly proportional to the wavelengths, with red wavelengths showing greater shifts than blue wavelengths. This is not possible with Doppler shifts, where all parts of a distant object must show the same shift, regardless of their colour.
In contrast with the "Expanding Universe" concept which still holds popular sway today, is the situation described here, which we can call the "Real Universe" view. Let's look at the basis of the Real Universe picture and how it differs from an Expanding Universe.
Real Universe versus Expanding Universe
The Expanding Universe or Big Bang Theory has at its root the ideas that the Universe came into being some 13.7 billion years as a point source, since when it has been expanding at a rate given by the Hubble Constant. The Real Universe is infinite in space and time, and is not expanding. However, in the Real Universe light (and other electromagnetic radiation) very slightly loses energy through Zwicky Gravitational Drag as it travels through space.
This energy loss (which shows up as a red-shift) is a fixed (although very tiny), percentage of the energy of the light involved, whatever its wavelength. It can be expressed in terms of the Zwicky Constant -- the distance a beam of light needs to travel in order to lose half its energy (the same as doubling its wavelength).
An estimate of the value of the Zwicky Constant "Z" is 7.7 billion light-years. Purely by coincidence, in astronomy the value of a red-shift is often denoted by the letter z, corresponding to the fractional change in wavelength involved. The two quantities are related, but not the same thing. A more detailed explanation is at BS814: Refining the Zwicky Constant: A new more soundly-based constant for inter-galactic distances, replacing the Hubble Constant [B].
The wavelengths of light from stars
Typical stars within our Milky Way Galaxy are Fusion Stars, producing energy from the fusion of lighter atomic nuclei into heavier ones. Figure F2 shows how the peaks of their
light emissions depend on their surface temperature -- hotter stars are blue, cooler ones red.
Fig. SL118-F2. Emission spectra for blue, yellow, and red stars. From [4].
The colour of light is an expression of its wavelength. The light from blue stars has its peak at wavelength of about 400 nm (a nanometre, nm, is a billionth of a metre). Red stars peak at about 700 nm.
The origin of LRDs
Divide 700 by 400, the answer is 1.75, getting on towards 2.0. If you are looking at star distances, it means that a star which is blue close up will have its light shifted to red when viewed from about 6.5 billion light-years away. For every extra 7.7 billion light years you move away, the light source you are viewing doubles its wavelength. So here is the origin of the LRDs, the Little Red Dots -- they are star sources so far away that their light output has been Zwicky-shifted down into the red part of the spectrum.
As a matter of fact, the more distant stars are not Fusion Stars, but Vortex Stars, though they too are subjected to the same wavelength-change mathematics. Vortex Stars is the general name for the rapidly-rotating objects giving out light in tight axial beams which include quasars and AGNs (Active Galactic Nuclei, the Supermassive Black Holes at the centre of Galaxies). More explanation on these is at UG102: Understanding Vortex Stars: White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars, Black Holes, and AGNs [C].
The Observable Universe
With the Expanding Universe paradigm comes the concept of an "observable universe" -- you can only ever observe objects which are expanding away at less than the speed of light, that is, up to about 13.7 billion light years away.
With the Real Universe paradigm, it might be thought at first that there are no limits to how far away an object could be observed, that would depend only on the magnification power of your telescopes. But what we have worked out above on LRDs does lead to second thoughts on this.
Fig. SL118-F3. The Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum. From [3].
Figure F3 shows the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, which ranges from the longest wavelengths (radio waves) to the shortest wavelengths (gamma rays). The visible-light spectrum is quite a small part of this.
Above we've seen that Zwicky Gravitational Drag roughly doubles the wavelength of a light source for every 7.7 billion years that light travels. The further away in the Universe a light-source is, the redder it will appear.
The LRDs are so far away that the emissions from the vortex stars they represent have been reddened down from originally much shorter wavelengths. There must be a limit to this process, redden even more and the images move down into the infrared, and become visible only to telescopes handling infrared signals.
Of course, the fading-away limits will depend on the original output wavelengths managed by the emitting vortex stars. Most of these emit in the visible range, some in the ultraviolet, and a few emit x-rays, though not as their main output. So the LRDs may lie at close to the practical limit (not the theoretical limit) of the Observable Universe. Any light-sources beyond this limit have had their emissions shifted down beyond the edge of the visible spectrum.
Looking again at the evidence
Looking again at the thoughts expressed in references [1] and [2], much becomes clearer. Concerns over LRDs appearing too old to fit in with a Big Bang disappear when the age limit on the Universe is removed.
Here are snippets from [1] and [2] which are not exceptional in the Real Universe paradigm. LRDs "only appear in the early universe. They disappear from surveys around a redshift of 4, meaning when the universe was less than 2 billion years old". Most of them "are active galactic nuclei, or AGN". "There are far more of them -- 10 to 100 times more -- than other surveys have indicated, whether they are quasars, AGN, or some other form of active black hole".
The LRDs only became accessible with the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope. "They are extremely difficult to observe, even with JWST, being "at the limits" of that telescope's observational capability". "they are active galactic nuclei (AGN) and host supermassive black holes at their center". "The gas in LRDs spins extremely fast. Scientists argue that the gas is accelerated to these extreme speeds by spinning, supermassive black holes".
The note on a "a redshift of 4" above more or less correlates with a distance of 4 x Z, so it's saying LRDs are at least 4 x 7.7 (30.8) light-years distant from us.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
AOI articles with relevant evidence
[A]. UG106: R.I.P. Expanding Universe (b. 1930, d. 2012) (The Big Bang never happened).
[B]. BS814: Refining the Zwicky Constant: A new more soundly-based constant for inter-galactic distances, replacing the Hubble Constant .
[C]. UG102: Understanding Vortex Stars: White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars, Black Holes, and AGNs.
References and links
[1]. Korey Haynes. The early universe's "Little Red Dots" are still a big mystery. https://www.astronomy.com/science/little-red-dots-are-still-a-big-mystery/ .
[2]. Little red dot (cosmological object). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_red_dot_(cosmological_object) .
[3]. The Electromagnetic Spectrum. https://www.jove.com/science-education/v/11295/the-electromagnetic-spectrum .
[4]. Blackbody Radiation. https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/b/blackbody+radiation.
[5]. Google AI. Shortest wavelengths detected from a star? (2025 Oct 9).
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