Astrophysics Seminar

During the last two years the James Webb Space Telescope has enormously extended our vision of the baryonic part of the Universe.  Discovery of bright galaxies at redshifts z=10 -- 16 has opened a window to glimpse into a very narrow period between the cosmic night -- the dark ages, and the cosmic dawn. One of the most surprising findings is the presence of exceptionally high masses of dust in some of them, equivalent to 1 -- 3% of the observed stellar mass being converted into dust. These observations contrast to galaxies at lower redshifts that reveal as a rule a much lower dust-to-stellar mass ratio: typically below 0.3%. This paradox, dubbed "the dust budget crisis", remains unsolved. I present a possible scenario to understand such a seemingly controversial dust evolution in the universe.