JWST discovers candidate black hole star from early universe
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified a solar-system-sized object 660 million years after the Big Bang that may represent a new class of “black hole star,” offering clues to the nature of the previously mysterious “little red dots.”
Astronomers analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Miracle or Mirage survey have identified a distant, ruby-colored source that could be the first solid evidence of a hypothesized “black hole star.” The object, named MoM-BH*-1, emitted its light about 660 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was roughly one-twentieth its current age, and shines roughly 100 billion times brighter than a typical star.
Researchers propose that the source is a massive black hole, up to 100,000 times the Sun’s mass, surrounded by an extremely dense shell of hydrogen-helium gas. The gas would be superheated by the black hole, producing the observed luminosity without the nuclear fusion that powers ordinary stars. Spectral analysis shows a deep Balmer break and a lack of heavy elements, indicating the light is not merely dust-obscured but is filtered through dense gas.
“Our picture of this object is evolving very rapidly,” said Rohan Naidu, lead author of the study and astronomer at the University of Hawaii.
“When we see something very red in the universe, we often assume that it is surrounded by dust,” explained Robert Simcoe, director of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
The team’s simulations suggest that only a rapidly spinning, quasar-like black hole could generate the observed properties while being cloaked by the gas envelope, which would also block high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray emissions typically seen from quasars. This mechanism could explain the “little red dots” – compact, luminous objects that are too bright to be ordinary stars yet too faint to be full galaxies.
If MoM-BH*-1 is representative, many of the previously detected red dots might be small galaxies hosting such black hole stars at their cores, possibly formed through collisions between black hole stars and primordial stellar clusters. The object appears to outshine any surrounding galactic material, making it visible as a distinct point source.
Further observations and modeling are required to confirm the nature of MoM-BH*-1 and to determine whether black hole stars are a common component of early-universe structures.