A powerful radio source has been discovered that is completely invisible to the James Webb Space Telescope.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Something Bright at the Edge of Everything: A Uniquely JWST-Dark Radio Source in COSMOS
arXiv · 2603.28863
The Takeaway
Despite being the most sensitive infrared telescope ever built, the JWST sees absolutely nothing at this location while radio telescopes detect a bright object. This suggests the object is either buried in an impossible amount of dust or is a 'ghost' lobe from a galaxy that has completely vanished.
From the abstract
For decades, astronomers have been searching for bright radio sources deep into the epoch of reionization (EoR). The most distant, powerful radio sources are expected to reside in heavily dust-obscured galaxies, exceedingly faint at optical and infrared wavelengths. Motivated by this, I systematically cross-match radio and JWST source catalogs in the COSMOS field and identify a uniquely JWST-dark radio source: the only object undetected in every JWST band, yet clearly detected in radio data from