\u201cIt is a very special thing to find an object with no comparison given the vast stores of data on billions of stars, galaxies, and black holes that we have in our archival databases,\u201d added Naidu, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. \u201cMoM-BH*-1 is one in a billion!\u201d<\/p>\n
Red tints in the cosmos <\/p>\n
If you follow astronomy news, you\u2019ve probably heard the chatter about\u00a0\u201clittle red dots\u201d seen in the early universe. These are bright, compact objects observed at high redshifts, meaning the \u201clight from them that reaches Earth has been traveling for billions of years,\u201d according to an accompanying News & Views by Dominik Schleicher and Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, astronomers at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy and the University of Concepci\u00f3n in Chile, respectively.<\/p>\n
Little red dots might not sound too impressive. But when they were first discovered, astronomers genuinely thought that something broke<\/a> in the James Webb Space Telescope, which observed these ancient objects. On the other hand, much about the universe\u2019s earliest days remains a mystery. So pinning down the true identity of little red dots\u2014relics from the cosmic dawn<\/a>\u2014would represent a huge advance in our understanding of our universe\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Little big giants <\/p>\n The discovery of MoM-BH*-1 touches on little red dots, as well as the mystery surrounding supermassive black holes from the early universe, which weigh millions to billions of solar masses. To Gizmodo, Naidu explained that black hole stars may be the \u201cbirth story of possibly every supermassive black hole,\u201d whereas little red dots could be seen<\/a> as a black hole star \u201cembedded within a larger galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n Typically speaking, dust absorbs and scatters blue light efficiently. So when astronomical objects appear red, astronomers assume that dust is behind this reddish tint, wrote Schleicher and Herrera-Camus. However, the spectral properties of MoM-BH*-1 are more consistent with the presence of a large cloud of ionized gas and minimal contribution from dust, according to the paper.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, the light from this object \u201cabruptly disappears\u201d below a certain wavelength, a phenomenon formally known as a Balmer break<\/a>, Naidu explained. In this way, black hole stars \u201csimultaneously show several of the quintessential properties of both black holes and stars,\u201d he added. \u201cWhat is special about MoM-BH*-1 is that it is effectively outshining its entire host galaxy, and so we are seeing \u2018pure\u2019 black hole star light.\u201d<\/p>\n Spilling the cosmic beans <\/p>\n According to Schleicher and Herrera-Camus, the findings raise new questions and insights into little red dots and, by extension, the state of the early universe. For instance, if the distinct color of little red dots is caused by gas, not dust, this could explain why the earliest supermassive black holes are far larger than what\u2019s predicted by conventional cosmological models. The study\u2019s analysis also complements other work<\/a> that identified similar traces of gas accreting around active black holes, they added.<\/p>\n Naidu is eager to dig deeper into the mystery of black hole stars. Naidu and colleagues have already secured JWST observation time. Starting in December, he said, the team will be hard at work locking down the \u201cdetailed physics of these remarkable objects\u2014how massive exactly are they, and what do their \u2018stellar\u2019 features tell us about their \u2018stellar\u2019 atmospheres?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAstronomers who study the early universe are so amped right now because of little red dots and black hole stars,\u201d Naidu said. \u201cMany astronomers have made comparisons to the 1960s and 70s when we first found supermassive black holes in the form of quasars. [\u2026] And now, thanks to JWST, and thanks to how delightfully surprising the universe is, we are reliving that very special period when we are rewriting the textbooks and filling out new chapters for things that we didn\u2019t even know existed!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the cosmic dawn, the universe was sprinkled with giant black holes\u2014monstrosities so huge that scientists are still…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":996289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[28891,5163,74314,159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-996288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astrophysics","tag-black-holes","tag-early-universe","tag-science","tag-space","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117083341832632338","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/996289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Balmer](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Balmer_Break_black_hole_Star-1280x596.jpg\")
A graph showing Balmer breaks, which occur when the outer layers of the star efficiently absorb light below a characteristic wavelength, observed in the star Vega and the black hole star MoM-BH*-1. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, DAWN JWST Archive, HST CALSPEC (Ralph Bohlin, Karl D. Gordon, P.-E Tremblay), JWST Mirage or Miracle Survey (PIs: Pascal Oesch, Rohan Naidu); Visualization: Rohan Naidu (University of Hawai\u2019i) <\/p>\n