Mothra and Godzilla, the intriguing “kaiju” giant stars discovered by James-Webb

In recent centuries, the astronomersthe astronomers given the names of the Greco-Latin gods for estraceestrace which he discovered. This was the case, for example, for Pluto, discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, or for Janus, lunelune Of saturnsaturn It was discovered in 1966 by French astronomer Audoin Dollfuss.

Modern astronomers have other four mythological sources GalaxiesGalaxies In the confrontation thus named ” Fantastic Four at the time of the release of one nominated Marvel film and now two StarsStars Unusually bright, and therefore one might believe unusually large, were christened not only “kaiju” stars but also Mothra and Godzilla, as recently deposited on the arXiv and published yet One can be assured by consulting the article that did not happen.

let’s remember that kaiju (怪獣?, literally meaning “strange animal” or “mysterious animal”) is a Japanese term for strange creatures, especially famous giant movie monsters that have become iconic, such as Godzilla and Mothra (モスラ, pronounced “mo”). -su-ra) in the Japanese version).

In a vacuum, light usually travels in a straight line. But, in space warped by a massive celestial body like the Milky Way, this trajectory is deviated! Thus, the apparent position of a light source behind a galaxy differs from its true position: this is a phenomenon of gravitational mirages. This video is derived from the web documentary “The Odyssey of Light” and integrated it into the webdocumentary “Riding with Dark Matter”. © CEA, Animeya

Small concentration of dark matter growing stars?

led the team of researchers hereastronomyastronomy The Spanish Jose Diego called Mothra the star he saw. Telescope Spatial James-WebbTelescope Spatial James-Webb Under the scientific name of EMO J041608.8−240358, as it appeared 10 billion years ago. JWST used gravitational lensing effect to more easily probeuniverseuniverse Visible from great distances, which of course makes the stars brighter, but both Mothra and Godzilla – who surpass Mothra in luminosity and are on the verge of winning the title of brightest star ever known in the noosphere – There are too many lens effects caused by galaxy clusters.

In fact, everything indicates that Mothra is in fact possibly a binary systembinary system made of two supergiant starssupergiant starsOne red and one blue.

The red star is cool and dim, with a black body surface temperature of about 5,000 K. KelvinKelvin for one GlowGlow 50,000 sonssons While the surface temperature of the blue star is estimated at 14,000 Kelvin and its luminosity is equivalent to about 125,000 suns.

In view of the apparent excess of brightness, astrophysicists propose the existence of another distribution of matter between Mothra and us, and which, by its field GravityGravityAdds an additional gravitational lensing effect.

But it requires concentration dark matterdark matterPossibly as a dwarf galaxy (perhaps ultra-extended, which would then raise questions), containing few stars and containing 10,000 to 2.5 million times as many stars. collectivelycollectively of the sun.

The mass limit of dark matter particles

standard cosmological modelstandard cosmological model The same predicts the existence of small concentrations of dark matter and the fact that it is seen so early with the JWST suggests that there must be many of them.

However, if this hypothesis is correct, the features seen with Mothra and Godzilla are likely to constrain the types of dark matter particles that are theoretically possible. This would be especially the case for models with well-known particles commonly known as axions.

We should learn more about this subject with studies of other unusually bright “kaiju” stars than what we can expect from the luminosity allowed by the standard and well-tested theory of star structure (eg See the famous work on the subject) of Francis LeBlanc).