James Webb Telescope discovers new ‘black hole star’ class

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have identified a new class of celestial object dubbed a ‘black hole star.’ The object, designated MoM-BH*-1, was observed as it existed approximately 660 million years after the Big Bang.

Research led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the journal Nature suggests the object is a rapidly growing supermassive black hole, roughly 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, enveloped in an extraordinarily dense cocoon of hydrogen gas. This gas envelope is so large it is comparable to the size of our solar system. Unlike traditional stars powered by nuclear fusion, this object’s immense energy output—estimated at 100 billion times that of the Sun—is driven by the central black hole consuming matter.

The discovery provides a potential explanation for the ‘Little Red Dots’ observed in deep-field images of the early universe, which have previously puzzled scientists due to their compact size and extreme redness. The findings may help resolve paradoxes regarding how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the infant universe.