Revision 1

Accepted · first revision · record

Title: Are globular clusters survivors of young massive clusters in early galaxies?
Plain: The James Webb Space Telescope sees very dense young star clusters in galaxies less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Whether today's globular clusters are the survivors of such clusters, or needed special conditions to form, is not known.
Precise: Decide whether present-day globular clusters formed by the same process as young massive clusters today, in high-pressure, gas-rich disks at $z \sim 2\ \text{to}\ 10$, followed by tidal disruption of most clusters, or require a distinct channel (for example formation in dark matter minihalos or as nuclei of accreted dwarfs). The model must reproduce the globular-cluster mass function, the age-metallicity relation of Milky Way clusters and the number of clusters per unit galaxy mass.
Settled by: JWST measurements of the mass function, sizes and formation efficiency of lensed clusters at $z \sim 2\ \text{to}\ 10$, compared with cosmological simulations that follow cluster formation and disruption to $z = 0$.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: classification
References: (empty)
Literature status: contested
Status note: Bound, dense clusters were reported in a lensed galaxy at $z \sim 10$, the Cosmic Gems arc (Adamo et al., Nature, 2024), supporting early formation without fixing the channel.
Posed since: (empty)