LONDON (IT BOLTWISE) – Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a new type of supermassive black hole surrounded by a dense shell of gas. This discovery could explain the mysterious little red dots seen in the telescope’s images.
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The recent discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have sent the astronomy community into a frenzy. Less than a month after the first scientific images were released in the summer of 2022, astronomers discovered tiny red dots scattered across the sky. These objects, which stood out prominently in the JWST images, were so compact and deep red that they appeared to represent an entirely new population of celestial bodies that the Hubble Space Telescope had never captured.
The small red dots, which glow primarily in the mid-infrared region, are so far away that their light took 12 billion years to reach Earth. This means we are looking at a time just 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang. The challenge was interpreting these observations because the points did not correspond to any known category of celestial bodies. One theory is that they are extremely dense, dust-shrouded galaxies filled with enormous numbers of stars.
An alternative interpretation is that these points are active galactic nuclei obscured by dust. These nuclei are formed when matter falls into a supermassive black hole, forming an extremely hot accretion disk. But this theory also has its limits, as the spectra of the red dots differ from the previously known active galactic nuclei. To solve the mystery, astronomers need more spectral data to better understand the physical properties of these objects.
A promising approach is the concept of so-called “black hole stars” (BH*), in which an active galactic core is surrounded by a dense hydrogen gas shell. These models, developed by Anna de Graaff and her team, provide a new perspective on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early universe. The discovery of such systems could explain how supermassive black holes were able to gain mass so quickly in the early days of the universe.
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