The James Webb Space Telescope Just Found the First 'Black Hole Star'

Crucially, the object's energy does not come from nuclear fusion, the process that powers ordinary stars. Instead, the central black hole is actively accreting, or consuming, matter. As gas falls into the black hole, it heats up, and that immense heat radiates outward through the hydrogen cocoon, causing the whole structure to shine . The result is an object that produces roughly 100 billion times more energy than a typical star — far beyond the limits of fusion .

Key Characteristics of MoM-BH*-1

Astronomers have precisely measured several defining features of this new object:

• Size: Its hydrogen gas envelope spans roughly the diameter of our Solar System .
• Mass: The central black hole weighs in at about 100,000 solar masses, and the total object carries a mass of around 10⁶·³ solar masses .
• Brightness: It releases approximately 100 billion times more energy than a normal star .
• Composition: The surrounding gas is almost pure hydrogen and helium, with virtually no detectable "metals" (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) . Its spectrum shows an extremely deep Balmer break, a signature that is inconsistent with ordinary stellar atmospheres .
• Energy Source: Its immense luminosity is powered by the actively accreting central black hole, not by nuclear fusion .
• Distance and Age: MoM-BH*-1 is seen as it existed just 660 million years after the Big Bang, at a redshift of about 7.76. This places it roughly 13.1 billion light-years away .

The object was discovered as part of JWST's "Mirage or Miracle" (MoM) survey, which was originally designed to hunt for some of the earliest galaxies in the universe . The team, led by MIT astronomer Rohan Naidu, stumbled upon the object while scanning JWST's deep-field images .

Solving the Mystery of the 'Little Red Dots'

Since JWST began its scientific operations, it has repeatedly found peculiar, faint, compact, and very red objects scattered throughout images of the early universe. Astronomers have called them the "little red dots," and their true nature has been a subject of intense debate .

The discovery of MoM-BH*-1 provides a powerful new clue. The object is what researchers call a "naked" black hole star. Its light comes almost entirely from the black-hole-powered gas envelope, with negligible contamination from an underlying host galaxy .

Crucially, MoM-BH*-1 lies close to a companion galaxy. Computer simulations show that after the black hole star merges with that galaxy — an event projected to occur roughly 100 million years after the observed epoch — its spectrum will closely match the spectra of the little red dots that are seen embedded inside other galaxies .

This strongly suggests that many of the little red dots are black hole stars in the process of merging with their host galaxies . They are essentially the central engines of baby quasars, hidden within the intestines of their host galaxies as they undergo cosmic mergers.

This model also neatly explains why the little red dots appear so compact and so red. The dense hydrogen cocoon surrounding the black hole effectively blocks short-wavelength (blue) light while allowing longer-wavelength (red) light to pass through, producing the characteristic red color without requiring large amounts of interstellar dust, which was another leading hypothesis .

What This Means for Understanding the Early Universe

The discovery of MoM-BH*-1 does more than solve a single mystery. It provides a plausible mechanism for how supermassive black holes could grow to enormous sizes in the relatively short time available in the early universe . By accreting matter at a furious rate within its dense gas cocoon, a black hole star represents a rapid-growth phase for black holes, a step on the path toward the billion-solar-mass behemoths seen at even earlier cosmic epochs.

The object, described in a study co-authored by researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and other international collaborators, is now the subject of intense follow-up study . For now, MoM-BH*-1 stands as a "one-in-a-billion" find — a rare glimpse of a previously invisible stage of cosmic evolution, and a direct link between a theoretical star-black hole hybrid and the persistent red dots that have dotted JWST's most famous images.