Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
Astronomers think they’ve spotted something radical: black holes hiding inside giant stars, masquerading as luminous dots. If confirmed, it could upend how we explain the universe’s earliest monsters.
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The James Webb Telescope first caught sight of mysterious “little red dots” in 2022. Now, one of them—brighter and stranger than expected—may be rewriting the textbooks on galaxy formation.
Nicknamed The Cliff for its sudden brightness spike, this object’s spectrum jumped so dramatically that it defied every known explanation, leaving researchers scrambling for new physics.
Unlike galaxies or active black holes, this object glows like a star—but it’s powered by a hungry black hole wrapped in gas. It shines not because it’s alive, but because it’s devouring.
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The eerie glow lines up with a phenomenon called the Balmer break, where dense hydrogen gas flares at specific temperatures—pointing to an exotic, never-before-seen class of object.
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If these black hole stars are real, they may explain how supermassive black holes appeared so early in cosmic history—when the universe was still too young to have grown them naturally.
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For decades, astrophysicists have struggled to explain how black holes ballooned so fast after the Big Bang. This bizarre hybrid object could be the missing piece in that mystery.
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To the eye of Webb, the red dots shimmer like galaxies—but their brightness changes too sharply. Instead of stable systems, they may be feeding furnaces of black hole-driven light.
The team plans to target even brighter red dots with Webb, hoping to prove—or disprove—that black hole stars really exist. For now, the cosmos is keeping its deepest secret half-closed.