For a while, researchers thought they had discovered ancient, mature galaxies that somehow formed way faster than expected \u2013 so fast they started calling them \u201cuniverse breakers.\u201d But after digging deeper, a new idea started to form. Maybe these weren\u2019t galaxies<\/a> at all.<\/p>\n A star that\u2019s hiding a black hole<\/p>\n In a recent study, scientists proposed a bold theory: the red dots might be something called a black hole<\/a> star. Picture a huge sphere of gas that looks like a cold, low-energy star \u2013 but inside, it\u2019s hiding a growing supermassive black hole.<\/p>\n Instead of getting its energy from fusion like a normal star, this object feeds off matter falling into the black hole at its core. That process generates energy and gives off light, creating the bright signal scientists saw.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, we looked at enough red dots until we saw one that had so much atmosphere that it couldn\u2019t be explained as typical stars we\u2019d expect from a galaxy,\u201d said Joel Leja, an associate professor of astrophysics at Penn State<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an elegant answer really, because we thought it was a tiny galaxy full of many separate cold stars, but it\u2019s actually, effectively, one gigantic, very cold star.\u201d<\/p>\n Cold stars that shine strangely<\/p>\n Stars<\/a> that are cold emit very little visible light. They glow mainly in the red or near-infrared part of the spectrum \u2013 a type of light our eyes can\u2019t see. These stars are usually small and faint, which makes them hard to find.<\/p>\n But these red dots stood out. The light they gave off wasn\u2019t from a hot, bright region like we usually see near black holes. Instead, it came from very cold gas, similar to what\u2019s found around low-mass stars.<\/p>\n Webb was built to pick up exactly this kind of ancient, stretched-out infrared light. Its infrared sensors can see light that traveled across the universe for over 13 billion years. That makes it perfect for spotting objects from the very early days of the cosmos.<\/p>\n The most extreme red dot<\/p>\n Between January and December 2024, the team gathered spectra \u2013 a kind of light fingerprint \u2013 from 4,500 galaxies. Spectra can tell scientists how bright something is across different wavelengths, which helps them figure out what it\u2019s made of and how massive it is.<\/p>\n One of these objects stood out. Nicknamed \u201cThe Cliff,\u201d it turned out to be the most extreme of all the red dots. It was so far away that its light took about 11.9 billion years to reach Earth.<\/p>\n \u201cThe extreme properties of The Cliff forced us to go back to the drawing board, and come up with entirely new models,\u201d said Anna de Graaff, a researcher for the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Spectral analysis showed that The Cliff wasn\u2019t made up of countless tiny stars. It was a single, massive object \u2013 a black hole pulling in gas so fast that it wrapped itself in a glowing shell of hydrogen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Are black hole stars a missing link?<\/p>\n Black holes are found at the center of most galaxies. Some of them are enormous \u2013 millions or even billions of times more massive than our sun. But no one knows exactly how they got that big, or how they formed in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one\u2019s ever really known why or where these gigantic black holes at the center of galaxies come from,\u201d said Leja. \u201cThese black hole stars might be the first phase of formation for the black holes that we see in galaxies today \u2013 supermassive black holes<\/a> in their little infancy stage.\u201d<\/p>\n That idea could help solve a major puzzle in astronomy. If these red dots are actually black hole stars, then maybe they\u2019re the missing link \u2013 the early-stage objects that grow into the supermassive black holes we see in today\u2019s galaxies.<\/p>\n Following clues from the universe <\/p>\n The team plans to keep studying these black hole star candidates, especially by looking at how dense the gas is and how strong the light output is. That might help confirm whether they\u2019re really seeing a new type of object.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the best idea we have and really the first one that fits nearly all of the data, so now we need to flesh it out more,\u201d said Leja. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s okay to be wrong. The universe is much weirder than we can imagine and all we can do is follow its clues. There are still big surprises out there for us.\u201d<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Image Credit: T. M\u00fcller\/A. de Graaff\/Max Planck Institute for Astronomy<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not everything in the universe is what it seems. Some things, like tiny red objects captured by NASA\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[49,48,314,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-151498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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