Astronomers in Penn State have nicknamed the “universe breakers” objects, which can be unusual black hole atmospheres and could represent a missing link in the rapid growth of supermassive black holes.
Small and weak reds detected by POT‘s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are giving new clues to astronomers about how galaxies formed in the early universe, and can point out a completely new cosmic category: a black hole that consumes large amounts of matter while emitting light.
When the first data on the telescope were available in 2022, an international collaboration that included researchers from Penn State identified “small red points” disconcerting. At first, the team proposed that these objects could be galaxies as developed as today Milky WayThat he is about 13.6 billion years, there are only 500 to 700 million years after big Bang.
Rethink the first galaxies
The researchers informally appointed the “universe breakers” objects, since they initially seemed to be much older and more evolved galaxies than expected in the early universe, a finding that would challenge the ideas of galaxies formation.
In an article published on September 12, 2025, in Astronomy and astrophysicsThe team, which included astronomers and physical of Penn State, proposed a different explanation. They argue that red points are not galaxies at all, but a previously unknown type of object known as black hole star.
According to their analysis, the weak points of light can be huge hot gas spheres so compact that they resemble atmospheres of ordinary stars fed by nuclear fusion. In this case, however, the energy source is not the merger but the supermassive black holes in their centers, which attract matter at high speed, transform it into energy and emit light.
A gigantic cold star
“Basically, we looked enough red points until we saw one that had so much atmosphere that it could not be explained as typical stars that we would expect from a galaxy,” said Joel Leja, the associate professor of astrophysics of half of the career of Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross in the document. “It really is an elegant response, because we thought it was a small galaxy full of many separate cold stars, but it is actually a gigantic and very cold star.”
Leja explained that cold stars emit only one dim light because their surface temperatures are much lower than those of typical stars. Although most stars in the universe fall into this category of low dough and cooler, they are often difficult to detect since their dim brightness is eclipsed by the rarest but much brighter mass stars. Astronomers recognize cold stars due to their emission in the red and near infrared optical range, wavelengths that are no longer visible to the human eye. In contrast to extremely hot gas that is generally located near the supermaasive black holes, which can reach millions of degrees CelsiusThe light of these “red point” black holes was dominated by very cold gas. According to the researchers, this emission was very similar to cold and low -dough atmospheres, based on the wavelengths detected.
See in time
The most powerful space of space, JWST was designed to see the genesis of the cosmos with infrared detection instruments capable of detecting the light emitted by the oldest stars and galaxies. Essentially, the telescope allows scientists to see approximately 13.5 billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it, Leja explained.
From the moment the telescope was lit, researchers around the world began to detect “small red points”, objects that seemed much more massive than galaxies models predicted. At first, Leja said, he and his colleagues thought that the objects were mature galaxies, which tend to get longer as the stars inside them grow old. But the objects were too bright to be explained: the stars would have to be full in the galaxies with an impossible density.
Extreme object cliff
“The night sky of such a galaxy would be dazzlingly bright,” said Bingjie Wang, now NASA Hubble member in Princeton University who worked in the document as a postdoctoral researcher in Penn State. “If this interpretation is maintained, it implies that the stars were formed through extraordinary processes that have never been observed before.”
To better understand the mystery, the researchers needed spectra, a type of data that could provide information on how much light the objects emitted in different wavelengths are emitted. Between January and December 2024, astronomers used almost 60 hours of webb time to obtain spectra of a total of 4,500 distant galaxies. It is one of the largest spectroscopic data sets that are obtained with the telescope.
In July 2024, the team saw an object with a spectrum that indicated a large amount of mass, so it is the most extreme case of such an early and large object. Astronomers nicknamed the object in question “the cliff”, which marked it as the most promising proof case to investigate exactly what those “small red points” were.
A burning gas cocoon
“The extreme properties of the cliff forced us to return to the drawing board, and developed completely new models,” said Anna De Graaf, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy and corresponding author in the document, in a press release from the Max Planck Institute.
The object was so distant that its light took approximately 11.9 billion years to reach the earth. The spectra analysis of that light indicated that it was actually a supermassive black hole, which ran into its surroundings at the same time that it got into a burning ball of hydrogen gas. The light that Leja and his colleagues did not come from thick groups of stars, but from a giant object.
Black holes in galaxies centers
The black holes are in the center of most galaxies, Leja explained. In some cases, these black holes are millions or even billions of times more massive than the sun of our solar system, which attract close matter with such force that it becomes energy and shines.
“No one has really known why or where these gigantic black holes come from in the center of the galaxies,” said Leja, who is also affiliated with the Institute of Computer Science and Data from Penn State. “These Black Hole stars could be the first formation phase for the black holes we see in the galaxies today: supermasive black holes in their small childhood stage.”
He added that JWST has already found signs of high mass black holes in the early universe. These new Black Hole star objects, which are essentially turbocharged mass builders, could help explain the early evolution of the universe, and can be a welcome addition to current models. The team is planning the future work to test this hypothesis by examining the gas density and the resistance of these first Black Hole stars, Leja said.
Of course, the mysterious “small red points” are at a great distance both in time and in space, and their small size makes it especially difficult to obtain a clear image.
“This is the best idea we have and really the first that fits almost all the data, so we now need to develop it more,” Leja said. “It’s okay to be wrong. The universe is much more strange than we can imagine and all we can do is follow their clues. There are still great surprises for us.”
Reference: “A remarkable ruby: absorption in dense gas, instead of evolved stars, drives the extreme rupture of Balmer from a small red point at Z = 3.5” by Anna de Graaf, Hans-Walter Rix, Rohan P. Naidu, Ivo Labbé, Bingjie Wang, Joel Leja, Jourly Matthee, Harley Katz, Jeenny E. Greene, Rhavonding, Rhaviding, Rhavides Josephine Baggen, Rachel Bazonson, Leinder A. Bogaard, Gabriel Brammer, Pratika Dayal, Pieter Van Dokkum, Andy D. Goulding, Michaela Hirschmann, Michael V. Maseda, Ian McConachie, Tim B. Miller, Erica, Eric Pascal A. Oesch, David J. Settona, Irene Shivee, Yrea, Yeibel. Whitaker and Christina C. Williams, September 10, 2025, Astronomy and astrophysics.
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202554681
Never miss an advance: Join the Scitechdaily Bulletin.
#mysterious #red #points #Breaker #Red #disguised #black #holes
