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8/2/2025, 7:21:14 PM
maybe those red dots are black holes in space!
https://www.science.org/content/article/early-universe-s-little-red-dots-may-be-black-hole-stars
"Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of gas powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole..."
The objects, which some astronomers are calling "black hole stars," could be a missing link in the evolution of galaxies and help explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes that lie at galaxy heart. "The big breakthrough of the past 6 months is actually the realization that we can throw out all these other models we've been playing with before," says astronomer de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy... JWST couldn't resolve the dots into a recognizable shape, which meant they must have been tiny — less than 2% of the diameter of the Milky Way. "It was a mystery ... as to why they were so spatially compact," says Casey. An impossibly dense packing of stars would be needed to explain their brightness. "I was excited," Casey says...
For Mitch Bagelmann the observations are a vindication. Earlier this month, he and a colleague posted a preprint on arXiv reviving a scenario for the formation of hypothetical "quasi-stars" that he and others had proposed 33 years ago. The first generation of stars, they calculated, could have grown to colossal size in the early universe, which was made up almost entirely of hydrogen, the raw material of stars. As the black hole chewed at its shroud of gas, the entire system glowed as a quasi-star larger than the Solar System. "That's what the quasi-star envelope is doing, it's force-feeding the black hole by pushing matter into it," Bagelmann says.
Given how common little red dots appear to be in the early universe, theorists are beginning to wonder whether this giant-ball-of-gas phase is an essential part of black hole growth and the evolution of galaxies.
https://www.science.org/content/article/early-universe-s-little-red-dots-may-be-black-hole-stars
"Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of gas powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole..."
The objects, which some astronomers are calling "black hole stars," could be a missing link in the evolution of galaxies and help explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes that lie at galaxy heart. "The big breakthrough of the past 6 months is actually the realization that we can throw out all these other models we've been playing with before," says astronomer de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy... JWST couldn't resolve the dots into a recognizable shape, which meant they must have been tiny — less than 2% of the diameter of the Milky Way. "It was a mystery ... as to why they were so spatially compact," says Casey. An impossibly dense packing of stars would be needed to explain their brightness. "I was excited," Casey says...
For Mitch Bagelmann the observations are a vindication. Earlier this month, he and a colleague posted a preprint on arXiv reviving a scenario for the formation of hypothetical "quasi-stars" that he and others had proposed 33 years ago. The first generation of stars, they calculated, could have grown to colossal size in the early universe, which was made up almost entirely of hydrogen, the raw material of stars. As the black hole chewed at its shroud of gas, the entire system glowed as a quasi-star larger than the Solar System. "That's what the quasi-star envelope is doing, it's force-feeding the black hole by pushing matter into it," Bagelmann says.
Given how common little red dots appear to be in the early universe, theorists are beginning to wonder whether this giant-ball-of-gas phase is an essential part of black hole growth and the evolution of galaxies.
8/2/2025, 2:46:48 PM
>>512033124
looks white
looks white
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