August 12, 2026 / 12:42 PM EDT
/ CBS/AFP
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Astronomers announced Wednesday they had discovered a new type of astronomical object called a "black hole star," potentially solving a mystery involving strange red dots spotted in the early universe. The object looks like a star the size of our solar system, but produces 100 billion times more energy than any star — a mighty blast of power closer to what is produced by a black hole. The black hole star, which dates from 660 million years after the Big Bang, was spotted by a U.S.-led team of astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Since history's most powerful telescope went online in 2022, it has been spotting many extremely bright cosmic objects dubbed "little red dots" in the early universe that have baffled scientists. "What exactly these objects are has been one of the most debated topics of the JWST era," lead study author Rohan Naidu of the University of Hawaii said in a statement. The team had been trying to find clues for a different mystery: why JWST keeps finding bright galaxies in the universe's infancy, when it was thought to have been too early for them to have become so huge. But while looking through the images, they spotted a little red dot.
