Does JWST's discovery of luminous star-forming galaxies, 'Little Red Dot’ AGNs, and massive quiescent galaxies in the early universe require rewriting galaxy formation or cosmology?
The first three scientific years of JWST operation has revealed a host of problems in our scientific understanding of the early Universe. First we have the discovery of over-luminous and over-abundant star forming galaxies at z>10, second we have the enigmatic population of over-abundant ‘Little Red Dots’ that burst in to the universe at z>4 and seem to represent a new mechanism of growth for early supermassive black holes. Finally we have the population of early massive quiescent galaxies whose formation seems to ‘break the universe’. These galaxy populations are all greatly in excess abundance compared to the pre-JWST predictions, and Little Red Dots were not predicted at all. No doubt all three problems are connected and may yield a single - and potentially revolutionary - solution if nature were to co-operate. A period of scientific chaos may give rise to a new unity. I will review the latest observations and model predictions for these topics and also point the way to the future beyond JWST where new wide-area space missions are very much needed to make ground-breaking contributions.
