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Webb Telescope Discovers Ancient 'Black Hole Star'

Does this reveal how supermassive black holes grew so fast or does it help solve the little red dot mystery?

Published AUG 13

Webb Telescope Discovers Ancient 'Black Hole Star'

Story

Above: Artist's illustration of a "black hole star," with a massive black hole shrouded in a dense gas cocoon. Image credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT

The Spin

Narrative A

This black hole star find is huge for understanding how supermassive black holes got so massive so fast in the first hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. A gas-wrapped baby black hole can grow by consuming the surrounding gas, eventually dispersing its envelope and fading from view. This may be the missing puzzle piece for how black holes reached enormous masses so early in the universe.

Black Hole on X

Narrative B

Besides just growth models, this discovery could finally crack the little red dot mystery James Webb has uncovered across the early universe. MoM-BH*-1 gives astronomers a physical template for these enigmatic objects: a gas-shrouded black hole whose accretion makes it glow red. If embedded in young galaxies, these black hole stars could explain the dots — and become the engines of baby quasars.

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