What’s a black hole star? Astronomers spot a strange red object bigger than our entire solar system

Astronomers say they may have identified a new kind of cosmic object that looks like a giant star but produces energy at levels associated with a black hole. Called a “black hole star”, the object is roughly the size of the solar system and was spotted in images from Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The object, known as MoM-BH-1*, sits in the constellation Cetus, or the Whale, billions of light years from Earth. Researchers believe it existed about 660 million years after the Big Bang, offering a glimpse into the early universe.

What is a black hole star?

The object has created a puzzle for astronomers because it appears to combine features of stars and black holes.


It gives off a brilliant red glow and looks much like an enormous star. But its energy output is around 100 billion times greater than that of any known star, according to the astronomers.

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That level of energy is much closer to what astronomers see from black holes. “We have found a new type of astrophysical object, a black hole star,” said Dr Rohan Naidu at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

The object “shines with the energy typically associated with black holes, but at the same time bears signatures classically associated with stars”, he added.

James Webb telescope spotted the strange red object

The discovery came while astronomers were using the James Webb Space Telescope to search for some of the most distant galaxies in the universe.

The team had already studied a galaxy called Mom-z14, which formed only about 280 million years after the Big Bang. Researchers then examined other objects appearing in the telescope's deep-space images.

One of them stood out. The astronomers identified an extremely bright red spot called MoM-BH-1*. It was the reddest object in the telescope's image archive.

“The way its light is almost entirely red, and abruptly disappears below a certain wavelength, is so dramatic that there is no comparison among any known class of objects,” Naidu said.

Not a giant star after all?

The team's computer simulations offer a possible explanation for the unusual object. Instead of being a gigantic star powered by nuclear fusion, MoM-BH*-1 could be a black hole surro unded by a thick layer of dense gas.

That gas may be so extensive that the black hole appears to shine like a star. This could explain why the object has characteristics that seem to belong to two very different kinds of cosmic bodies.

Could other Little Red Dots be black hole stars?

The finding could also help explain a larger mystery emerging from James Webb Space Telescope observations. Astronomers have spotted numerous objects known as Little Red Dots, or LRDs, in deep-space images. If the new interpretation is correct, some of these mysterious red objects could also be black hole stars.

That would make the discovery more than an isolated cosmic oddity. It could point to a previously unknown stage in the development of black holes in the early universe.

Could black hole stars explain supermassive black holes?

Naidu believes these objects could have played an important role in the formation of galaxies. One possibility is that black hole stars were the early seeds that eventually grew into the supermassive black holes found at the centres of galaxies, including the Milky Way.

“For decades we have anticipated something spectacular must be afoot in the very early universe. Black hole stars may be the ‘something spectacular’. They may be the nascent, swaddled phase that marks the beginning of almost every supermassive black hole’s journey,” he said.

Supermassive black holes sit at the centres of almost all galaxies and are thought to influence how those galaxies evolve.

Why the discovery matters

The idea could change how astronomers understand the early stages of galaxy formation.

If black hole stars existed in large numbers during the universe's infancy, they may have helped determine when stars began forming and when that process slowed or stopped.

“They may govern when stars are able to form and when they cease forming, setting the course for everything that follows from star formation: the birth of planets, the rise of life, the emergence of species that may one day piece together this entire history,” Naidu said.

For now, the black hole star remains a proposed new class of cosmic object. But if further observations confirm the explanation, the strange red object found in Webb's images could offer astronomers a new clue to one of the biggest questions in cosmology: how the first supermassive black holes and galaxies came to exist.