The tiny “red dots” that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been detecting since 2022 may not be unusually mature galaxies as scientists once thought, but a completely new type of object: “black hole stars” – giant clumps of gas surrounding a supermassive black hole.
In a study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, an international team led by Penn State University scientists said spectroscopic data showed that the red dots were not the result of a merging of many cool stars, but rather came from extremely large balls of hydrogen gas.
At their centers are supermassive black holes that suck in matter at tremendous speeds, converting it into energy and emitting light.
“We initially thought this was a small galaxy filled with cool stars, but it turns out it's a giant, very cool star, fed by a central black hole,” said study co-author Joel Leja of Penn State.
The team spent nearly 60 hours of observations with JWST from January to December 2024, collecting spectra of 4,500 distant galaxies. Among them, an object nicknamed “The Cliff” showed an extremely large mass, light emitted 11.9 billion years from Earth, revealing its nature as a supermassive black hole wrapped in a giant ball of hot gas.
According to scientists, “black hole stars” may be the initial stage in the formation of supermassive black holes at the center of today's galaxies.
JWST's detection of multiple signs of this type of object opens up an explanation for the unusually early appearance of massive black holes in the universe.
“This is the first hypothesis that fits most of the data,” said Anna de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, corresponding author of the study. “We will continue to test it by analyzing the gas density and luminosity of these ‘black hole stars’.”
However, the group stressed that the mystery is not yet closed, because the "red dots" are too far away and too small to observe in detail.
Mr. Leja concluded: “The universe is stranger than we think. What we can do is continue to follow the clues it leaves behind.”
Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/da-co-loi-giai-giach-cho-su-xuat-hien-som-cua-cac-ho-den-lon-trong-vu-tru-post1061573.vnp
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