JWST discovers distant, solar-system-sized object that may be first confirmed black-hole star
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified a red, ultra-bright source from 660 million years after the Big Bang that could represent a new class of object—a black-hole star—surrounded by a dense gas envelope.
A red, ultra-bright source detected by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Mirage (MoM) survey is being described as the strongest candidate yet for a "black-hole star," a hypothesized object that may have existed during the universe’s early "cosmic dawn." The object, named MoM-BH*-1, lies about 660 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was roughly one-twentieth of its current age, and its luminosity is estimated at about 100 billion times that of a typical star.
Researchers say the source’s ruby hue and the absence of certain wavelengths—known as a deep Balmer break—indicate that its light is passing through an extremely dense shell of hydrogen-helium gas rather than being scattered by dust. Simulations suggest that only a massive, rapidly spinning black hole, possibly up to 100,000 solar masses, could heat such a gas envelope to produce the observed emission, effectively replacing nuclear fusion as the energy source.
"Our picture of this object is evolving very rapidly," said Rohan Naidu, lead author of the study and an astronomer at the University of Hawaii.
"When we see something very red in the universe, we often assume that it is surrounded by dust," added Robert Simcoe, director of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
The discovery follows earlier identification of a similar candidate, dubbed "the Cliff," and the team argues that MoM-BH*-1 provides the clearest evidence to date because it is more distant and therefore older. If black-hole stars are common among the numerous "little red dots"—compact, luminous objects that are too bright to be ordinary stars yet too faint to be full galaxies—this could explain why those dots lack detectable high-energy X-ray or gamma-ray emission; the dense gas envelope would absorb such radiation.
The authors propose that many of the red dots may be small galaxies hosting a black-hole star at their core, formed when such objects merged with primordial stellar clusters. Images of MoM-BH*-1 suggest it could collide with a larger galactic structure within about 100 million years, though further observations are required to confirm the nature of these early-universe sources.