Black hole star: Astronomers discover a brand-new type of astrophysical object

Astronomers at MIT and other institutions have discovered a new type of astrophysical object, dubbed a "black hole star," in the early universe. The object is an extremely bright red spot that resembles a star but emits 100 billion times more energy than any known star. The team believes it is a combination of a black hole and a star, which has never been observed before. The object is likely a dense cloud of gas powered by a central black hole, with a mass 100,000 times that of the Sun. The discovery is based on observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which spotted the object in the early universe, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

• The object is named MoM-BH*-1, after the survey that detected it, and "black hole star—one."
• The object is extremely bright, with a Balmer break that rules out ordinary stars as the source.
• The object's light contains almost no signature of metals or other elements, suggesting it is a unique, gas-enshrouded black hole.

The discovery challenges existing astrophysical models and could help explain the identity of other mysterious "little red dots" seen in JWST images. The object's extreme brightness and lack of typical stellar features suggest it is not powered by nuclear fusion, but by an accreting black hole. The team's simulations show that the most likely scenario is a black hole star, with a central black hole 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, surrounded by a dense hydrogen cocoon. The object is so bright that it outshines its surrounding galaxy, revealing pure black hole star light. The study's authors suggest that such objects could explain many of the other red dots observed in early universe images.

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