The Real-Life 'Black Hole Sun' Astronomers May Have Just Discovered
When 90s grunge band Soundgarden wrote their iconic hit Black Hole Sun, they almost certainly had no idea their fictional concept would end up aligning with a potentially real cosmic discovery.
A new paper published in Nature chronicles what astronomers are calling a "black hole star"—an object roughly the size of our entire solar system, glowing bright red in the deepest reaches of space. The findings are drawn from new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the revolutionary instrument that continues to rewrite how astronomers understand the origin and evolution of the cosmos.
For this study, researchers focused on some of the farthest observable objects in the universe, which bear a striking, misleading resemblance to ordinary stars. The light they emit shares key traits with that of giant stars, but astronomers now suspect these bodies are actually black holes wrapped in an extraordinarily dense, luminous shroud of gas. These hypothetical objects have been named "black hole stars," and the new research, published Wednesday, lays out the first robust observational case for their existence.
The signal at the heart of the study dates back to a time when the universe was only 660 million years old—for context, the universe is now nearly 14 billion years old. In JWST’s deep-field images of the early universe, the object appears as just one of many bright red spots the telescope has uncovered in this ancient era. Viewed from billions of light-years away, it looks indistinguishable from a gigantic star at first glance. But the object, cataloged as MoM-BH*-1, has several unusual properties that defy standard stellar explanations.
According to the research team, MoM-BH-1 emits roughly 100 billion times more energy than any star could produce through nuclear fusion. Even for the early universe, when far more massive cosmic objects formed than do today, it is an exceptionally bright body. What’s more, a significant portion of its light abruptly disappears at specific wavelengths. Stars can produce a similar pattern when their atmospheres absorb specific light wavelengths, but the effect seen in MoM-BH-1 is far too intense to be explained by normal stellar behavior. Instead, researchers conclude an enormous cloud of ultra-dense gas is responsible for absorbing the missing light.
These odd clues led the team to the black hole star hypothesis. Their model places a growing black hole at the center of MoM-BH*-1, which devours surrounding matter and releases massive amounts of energy in the process. This energy is wrapped in a huge gaseous envelope before it escapes into space, and as it passes through the gas, it takes on the same characteristics we normally associate with starlight.
This hypothesis could also solve another longstanding puzzle JWST has revealed. The telescope has spotted small, bright red spots in the early universe with surprising frequency, and their origins remain unaccounted for by standard cosmic classification. Scientists have put forward a range of possible explanations, including compact galaxies packed full of stars, dust-obscured black holes, and entirely new types of cosmic systems that do not exist in the modern universe. Black hole stars are now a leading candidate to explain these mysterious objects.
MoM-BH*-1 is uniquely valuable to this line of research because, unlike other mysterious red spots spotted by JWST, its central black hole almost completely outshines and obscures the surrounding galaxy it sits in.
"Every little red dot is consistent with being a black hole star, embedded in a generic early galaxy. But what is special about MoM-BH*-1 is that the black hole star is essentially completely outshining its surrounding host galaxy, such that we’re seeing pure black hole star light," explained study lead author Rohan Naidu, who completed the work while at MIT, in a press release.
This article was originally published by WIRED en Español and adapted for English audiences.
