Summary (tl;dr)

Astronomers at MIT have announced the discovery of a new type of cosmic object, dubbed a "black hole star," which is an extremely bright red spot in the early universe powered by a central black hole shrouded in a dense, star-like cocoon of hydrogen.

Essential Background

For years, astronomers have been puzzled by numerous extremely bright "little red dots" observed in images of the early universe captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These objects appeared too luminous to be explained by conventional stellar processes, leading to debate about their true nature.

The Full Story

A team of astronomers, primarily from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recently published findings in the journal Nature detailing their discovery of an object named MoM-BH*-1. This object, located just 660 million years after the Big Bang, resembles an enormous star, spanning the size of our solar system, but emits 100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically produce, an energy output closer to that generated by a black hole. Researchers concluded that MoM-BH*-1 is a previously unobserved combination: a black hole, approximately 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, enshrouded in a dense, hydrogen-rich "cocoon," which causes it to radiate like a star. This groundbreaking find was made possible through observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

Why It Matters

This discovery of a "black hole star" represents a potentially new category of astrophysical objects and could resolve the mystery of the enigmatic "little red dots" observed by the JWST, suggesting many of them might be similar objects. The existence of such objects in the early universe has significant implications for understanding how the first supermassive black holes formed so quickly after the Big Bang, and how early galaxies evolved, potentially rewriting the timeline of massive structure formation in the cosmos.

Geographic Location

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States (research and announcement of black hole star discovery)
• Space (observations made by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope)