Samples of ‘little red dots (LRD)’ collected through observations by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It was confirmed that these celestial bodies appeared in large numbers about 600 million years after the Big Bang and rapidly decreased about 1.5 billion years later. Provided by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Dale Kocevski/Colby College
The common analysis results regarding the identity of the ‘little red dots (LRD)’, unidentified celestial objects from the early days of the universe, discovered through observations by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), are that they are black holes surrounded by a thick layer of gas.
Vadim Rusakov, a team of researchers at the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics (JBCA) at the University of Manchester, UK, published the results of an analysis in the international academic journal ‘Nature’ on the 14th (local time) showing that the identity of the new astronomical objects ‘little red dots (LRD, LRD)’ discovered through observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is highly likely to be a black hole growing surrounded by gas in the early universe.
The existence of LRD was first detected by JWST in 2022. It attracted the attention of astronomers because its characteristics were different from those of previously known celestial bodies. At the beginning of the study, LRD was assumed to be a mature galaxy, but subsequent observations showed that the size of LRD was so small that it was difficult to view it as a galaxy full of stars. It had different characteristics from the normal star formation process and supermassive black holes.
The research team analyzed data from a total of 30 galaxies and estimated that the LRD was a black hole surrounded by a dense gas cloud. As a result of analyzing the spectrum of light emitted from the center of the LRD, it was analyzed that the light was generated by scattering photons from electrons in the dense gas cloud surrounding the black hole. They also calculated that the size of the central black hole would be about 1/100 smaller than estimated in previous studies.
The research team plans to continue exploring through follow-up research whether this ‘cocoon stage’ is common and what effect it has on the growth of black holes and galaxies.
The conclusion that LRD is a black hole surrounded by a dense gas cloud is also commonly presented by other research groups. This means that there is a strong possibility that LRD is a ‘black hole star’, a theoretically proposed celestial body. It is a celestial body that emits bright light by obtaining energy from a black hole rather than nuclear fusion like a regular star.
According to a research paper by an international joint research team published in the international academic journal ‘Astronomy and Astrophysics’ on September 10th (local time) last year, the results of analyzing the light coming from the LRD showed that it must be surrounded by warm and dense gas similar to the atmospheric layer of a star while having extremely high energy like a black hole.
Professor Mitchell Wegelman’s team at the Joint Institute for Experimental Astrophysics (JILA) published the analysis results that LRD is a black hole star, which is a huge gas lump surrounding a newborn black hole and a black hole, on the pre-disclosure site ‘ArXiv’ in July last year.
A research team from the University of Arizona discovered three LRDs about 1 billion light-years away from Earth (1 light-year is the distance traveled in 1 year at the speed of light) and published the research results on arXiv in July of last year. This suggests that LRD can appear not only in the early universe but also in the mature universe.
– doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09900-4
– doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202554681
– doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.09085
– doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.10659
