JWST finds nine category-defying objects. Have astronomers found their "platypus?"

"In the animal kingdom, one of the most bizarre discoveries of all-time was the platypus. When reports of the platypus reached the western hemisphere, most leading naturalists at the time assumed it was a hoax, including the first European scientists to examine a specimen in 1799. It was an animal that laid eggs, yet it was a mammal. It had the bill of a duck, but the tail of a beaver."

"It had (at least, the males do) venomous spurs on their hind legs, but also the ability to locate other creatures in the water through a specialized sense known as electroreception, common in sharks but very rare among mammals. And yet, the platypus exists with all of these properties, even if it would take decades (or more than a century) before we understood how such a creature could come to exist."

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified a significant collection of point-like sources at large cosmic redshifts that exhibit narrow emission lines and do not fit established categories such as stars, galaxies, active galactic nuclei, or quasars. These objects are point-like, distant, and show narrow rather than broad emission features, a combination atypical for known object classes. Their properties challenge existing classification schemes and suggest the presence of an unexpected astrophysical population. The situation is analogous to the platypus, which combined traits thought incompatible, prompting reevaluation of formation scenarios. Further observational follow-up and theoretical modeling are required to determine the physical nature, emission mechanisms, and cosmological significance of these sources.

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