ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER BLACK HOLE STAR IN DISTANT UNIVERSE

An international team of astronomers has discovered what they describe as a new type of cosmic object: a black hole star located approximately 30 billion light years from Earth in the constellation Cetus. The object, designated MoM-BH*-1, is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light. It formed around 660 million years after the Big Bang, according to the team's analysis published in Nature.

The black hole star releases approximately 100 billion times more energy than any known star can produce, placing its energy output far closer to that observed from black holes than conventional stars. Dr Rohan Naidu, assistant professor at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy, who led the work whilst at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, stated that the object "shines with the energy typically associated with black holes, but at the same time bears signatures classically associated with stars." Computer simulations indicate the object is a black hole densely shrouded in gas that radiates like a star, rather than an enormous star powered by nuclear fusion. Its light is almost entirely red and abruptly disappears below a certain wavelength, making it distinctive among known objects.

The discovery may explain hundreds of mysterious objects known as "little red dots" that appear across nearly every deep space image captured by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope. Jorryt Matthee, assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, indicated the findings could help resolve long-standing questions about how supermassive black holes formed so rapidly in the early universe. Naidu suspects black hole stars play a major role in galaxy evolution, potentially addressing the puzzle of "problematic quasars" that appeared too massive to exist in the early cosmos.