MoM-BH*-1

In telescope images, it appeared as an extremely bright red dot.

科学家利用詹姆斯韦伯太空望远镜 发现了一个非常明亮的红色天体。 Its scientific name is MOM-BH-1.

We are seeing it as it appeared about 660 million years after the Big Bang, very early in the history of the universe.

At first it looked a little like a gigantic star.

Next, astronomers at MIT and international institutions discovered a brand new type of astrophysical object in the early universe known as a black hole star using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

Designated MOM-BH1 and existing just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, The object resembles a solar system-sized star, but shines 100 billion times brighter than any known star, producing an energy output typically associated with a black hole.

Simulations indicate the object consists of a central black hole roughly 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, enshrouded by an extremely dense, dust-free cocoon of hydrogen gas, mimicking a stellar appearance through its gaseous pseudophotosphere rather than being powered by nuclear fusion.

Published in Nature, the discovery would solve the mystery of the enigmatic little red dots frequently captured in deep-space James Webb Space Telescope imagery.

So if you looked at this object, this MOM-BH star, one through a telescope, you'd swear you were just looking at a massive hyperluminous star.

Right.

From the outside, it's just this blindingly bright point of light.

It really does.

I mean, we're used to the standard hydrostatic equilibrium in stars, right? Nuclear fusion, pushing out, gravity pulling in.

But with MOM-BHSTAR-1, there is no fusion core.

No.

The inward crush of gravity isn't met by hydrogen fusing into helium.