Through the past 12 billion years of cosmic time, galaxies have been in a near-equilibrium state, with their star-formation rates, stellar masses and chemical abundances tightly connected. But, from JWST observations, it now seems that at earlier times galaxies deviated from this relation, owing to the inflow of pristine gas in the early Universe.
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References
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This is a summary of: Heintz, K. E. et al. Dilution of chemical enrichment in galaxies 600 Myr after the Big Bang. Nat. Astron. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02078-7 (2023).
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Clues to galaxy assembly and chemical enrichment in the early Universe. Nat Astron 7, 1421–1422 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02080-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02080-z
