JWST's New Black Hole Star Discovery Changes Early Space Timelines
With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have discovered the strongest evidence yet that mysterious, early-universe objects known as "little red dots" are actually black hole stars, i.e. rapidly growing supermassive black holes enshrouded by dense, cosmic clouds.
Ever since Webb began capturing the cosmos in 2022, astronomers have been puzzled by an abundance of tiny, crimson points dating back to just 600 million years after the Big Bang. These objects challenged established timelines: appearing far too massive, far too early. A leading theory at the time suggested these dots were black hole stars, or supermassive black holes trapped inside thick shells of gas, but concrete evidence remained elusive. That is, until a team led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin isolated a specific dot named GLIMPSE-17775.
The team's breakthrough relied heavily on Einstein's gravitational lensing prediction. While targeting the galaxy cluster...
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