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PARIS: Astronomers announced on 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 US-led team of astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope, according to a study published 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 Hawaii University said in a statement.
