NASA's James Webb Telescope Finds Strongest Evidence Yet for 'Black Hole Stars' in Early Universe
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has identified the strongest evidence to date that mysterious 'little red dots' discovered in the early universe are supermassive black holes surrounded by dense gas, based on detailed spectroscopic analysis of an object called GLIMPSE-17775. The object, located 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang, was observed as part of a study of galaxy cluster Abell S1063 and magnified by gravitational lensing. The finding helps resolve a puzzle about these enigmatic early-universe objects that have puzzled astronomers since their discovery in 2022.
Astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin used the James Webb Space Telescope to obtain the deepest spectrum yet of a 'little red dot'—a mysterious class of objects discovered in the early universe. The analysis of GLIMPSE-17775 revealed multiple lines of spectroscopic evidence supporting the 'black hole star' (BH*) model, which proposes that these objects are supermassive black holes enveloped in dense, partially ionized gas. The object existed approximately 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang and was magnified by gravitational lensing from galaxy cluster Abell S1063. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal, represents a significant step toward understanding these puzzling early-universe objects, which have been the subject of multiple competing explanations since Webb's initial discovery of them in 2022. The detailed 30-hour spectrum provided by Webb allowed researchers to test theoretical models more rigorously than previous observations of other little red dots.
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