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A gas-enshrouded and gas-reddened black hole at cosmic dawn

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The physical processes that led to the formation of billion-solar-mass black holes within the first 700 million years of cosmic time, a period known as cosmic dawn, remain a puzzle1. Several theoretical scenarios have been proposed to seed and rapidly grow black holes2,3,4, but direct observations of these mechanisms remain elusive. Here we present a source 660 million years after the Big Bang that exhibits singular properties: among the largest hydrogen Balmer breaks reported at any redshift, broad multi-peaked Hβ emission, and Balmer line absorption in several transitions. We model this source as an enshrouded black hole in which the Balmer break and absorption features are a result of extremely dense, turbulent gas forming a dust-free envelope around a supermassive black hole5,6. This source may provide evidence of an early black hole embedded in dense gas—a theoretical configuration proposed to rapidly grow black holes by super-Eddington accretion7,8. Radiation from the black hole seems to dominate almost all observed light, leaving limited room for contribution from its host galaxy. If the source merged with its brighter neighbour, it would resemble the recently discovered ‘little red dots’ with perplexing spectral energy distributions9,10,11. The redness of the black hole is due to gas, not dust12,13, and scattering, not kinematics, gives rise to the complex line shapes and luminosities—black hole masses of these sources may therefore be overestimated by orders of magnitude.

Astronomers discover a new kind of cosmic object – a black hole ‘star’

The body is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light billions of light years from Earth

Astronomers claim to have discovered a new kind of cosmic object, a black hole “star”, which is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light.

The international team made the breakthrough after focusing their attention on a mysterious red spot in images of the early solar system captured by Nasa’s James Webb space telescope.

The object was lurking in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale, billions of light years from Earth. It is thought to have formed 660m years after the big bang, astronomers’ leading theory as to how the universe began.

Astronomers discover the existence of a ‘black hole star’

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The strange bright red dots are visible in nearly every image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). However, the frequency of their cosmic cameos didn’t make them any more explicable to astronomers. But after four years of analysis, researchers now believe they know why it was so difficult to identify these mystery subjects: they’re an entirely new astrophysical source.

“Our picture of this object is evolving very rapidly,” Rohan Naidu, an astrophysicist at MIT, said in a statement.

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