Astronomers have identified an entirely new kind of astrophysical object in the early universe, describing it as a black hole star. The object, named MoM-BH*-1, was found roughly 660 million years after the Big Bang and is located in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale, according to details published in the journal Nature by an international research team.
Astronomers Discover a New Astrophysical Object Known as a Black Hole Star
The unusual object appears as an extremely bright, very red point of light that spans roughly the size of our solar system. Measurements reveal that it produces about 100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically generate, placing its energy output much closer to the level emitted by black holes.
Inside the Physics of MoM-BH*-1
Lead author Thedailystar, who performed the work at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is now at the University of Hawaii, noted that the object shines with the energy typically associated with black holes, but at the same time bears signatures classically associated with stars
as reported by The Guardian.
After running computer simulations to explain the signals captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers concluded that the object is not powered by nuclear fusion like a normal star. Instead, it consists of a central black hole surrounded by an extended, dense envelope of pristine hydrogen and helium gas. According to the team’s model, the black hole functions as the engine while the surrounding gas behaves like a stellar atmosphere. Astronomer Nicholas Seymour of Curtin University estimated that the object possesses roughly a million times the mass of Earth’s Sun, with a central black hole roughly eight times the size of the Sun.
The discovery was made during a JWST survey called ‘Mirage or Miracle’, which was originally designed to search for the most distant galaxies. The object stood out because its light contains almost no elements other than hydrogen and helium and exhibits the deepest hydrogen absorption feature—known as a Balmer break—ever observed by the team, ruling out ordinary stars.
Solving the Mystery of Little Red Dots
The findings may help solve a prominent debate regarding little red dots
(LRDs) discovered in deep space images captured by JWST. These dots appear frequently in the early universe but are absent in the present day. Researchers suspect that many of those mysterious LRDs are actually black hole stars.
Christian Wolf, an astronomer at the Australian National University who was not involved with the study, described the find as the most exciting black hole to be reported in years of black hole research
and called the object the first ‘supermassive black hole teenager’ humanity has seen
according to RNZ. Naidu noted that black hole stars may represent the nascent, swaddled phase marking the beginning of almost every supermassive black hole’s journey, potentially governing when stars and planets are able to form.
