{"id":473641,"date":"2026-03-13T15:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T15:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/473641\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T15:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T15:31:08","slug":"the-mystery-of-the-universes-first-black-holes-could-be-solved-by-monster-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/473641\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of the Universe\u2019s First Black Holes Could Be Solved by \u2018Monster Stars\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, astronomers have faced a stubborn problem: supermassive black holes were already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang, yet ordinary stellar evolution does not produce such massive objects quickly enough. The new result points to a different route, one involving short-lived, enormous first-generation stars.<\/p>\n

According to the University of Portsmouth summary of the work, the evidence comes from the fossil chemical record in GS 3073, a galaxy at redshift z = 5.55. That record, the researchers argue, preserves the signature of stars so massive and so unusual that no known modern stellar population can reproduce it.<\/p>\n

A Chemical Fingerprint Unlike That of Ordinary Stars<\/p>\n

The central clue in GS 3073 is its nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio of 0.46. According to the paper by Devesh Nandal, Daniel J. Whalen, Muhammad A. Latif, and Alexander Heger, no known stars or supernovae can account for a value that high in this galaxy while also matching its carbon-to-oxygen and neon-to-oxygen ratios.<\/p>\n

\"HH-R and Kippenhahn Diagrams for a 7000 M\u2299 Pop III Star Showing Evolution from Pre-MS to Si Burning.\u00a9The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/p>\n

The authors write in the abstract that \u201cthe extreme N abundances in GS 3073 can be produced by 1000\u201310,000 M\u2299 primordial (Pop III) stars.\u201d They add that these are \u201cthe only candidates\u201d able to explain the observed combination of abundance ratios. That is the key point here, and it matters because the claim is not based on nitrogen alone.<\/p>\n

The researchers modeled primordial stars <\/a>in 1,000-solar-mass steps from 1,000 to 10,000 solar masses using the Geneva Stellar Evolution Code. Their results showed that stars below 1,000 solar masses and above 10,000 solar masses do not reproduce the same pattern. In the paper\u2019s wording, GS 3073 is \u201cthe first conclusive evidence in the fossil abundance record of the existence of supermassive Pop III stars at cosmic dawn.\u201d<\/p>\n

How These Stars Made So Much Nitrogen<\/p>\n

The mechanism described in the study is specific. Inside these stars, helium burning in the core produces carbon. That carbon then reaches the hydrogen-burning shell, where it is converted into nitrogen through the CNO cycle, and convection spreads the nitrogen through much of the star.<\/p>\n

\"AbundanceAbundance Profiles of a 7000 M\u2299 Star at Core He Burning and Si Burning Stages\u00a9The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/p>\n

According to the paper<\/a> published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, this sequence is what drives the nitrogen enrichment across the 1,000 to 10,000 solar mass range. The authors describe a \u201crobust sequence\u201d in which carbon from the convective helium core reaches the hydrogen-burning shell, becomes nitrogen, and is then dispersed through the envelope by convective zones. It is a rather neat chain, even if the stars themselves were anything but neat.<\/p>\n

Source 1 reports a quote from Devesh Nandal that captures the result in plain language: \u201cChemical abundances act like a cosmic fingerprint, and the pattern in GS3073 is unlike anything ordinary stars can produce.\u201d In the same statement, he says the galaxy\u2019s extreme nitrogen matches only primordial stars \u201cthousands of times more massive than our sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Possible Path to the First Giant Black Holes<\/p>\n

The study does not stop at chemistry. It also follows the fate of these stars and finds that, once their fuel is exhausted, they collapse into black holes rather than ending as standard supernovae. That matters because GS 3073 also contains an active central black hole.<\/p>\n

According to the paper, all 10 modeled stars enter the pair-instability regime late in life, yet even then explosive burning is not expected to reverse collapse because of their enormous mass. In one collapse test for an 8000-solar-mass star, the central 1200 solar masses reached infall velocities of 10% of the speed of light. The authors state that such stars would likely leave behind massive black holes.<\/p>\n

SciTechDaily quotes Daniel Whalen saying, \u201cOur latest discovery helps solve a 20-year cosmic mystery,\u201d adding, \u201cWith GS 3073, we have the first observational evidence that these monster stars existed.\u201d In the same source, he says these objects would have burned brightly for a short time before collapsing into massive black holes. In GS 3073, the paper notes, the observed active galactic nucleus has a black hole mass of log(MBH) = 8.2 \u00b1 0.4 at z = 5.55, which the authors discuss in the context of growth from such a seed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, astronomers have faced a stubborn problem: supermassive black holes were already in place less than a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2302,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-473641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}