Giant Stars With Black Holes Inside Them May Have Been Detected For The First Time

28 September 2025
By Michelle Starr



Black holes inside huge balls of scorching hot, turbulent hydrogen could be lighting up the early Universe. (MPIA/HdA/T. Müller/A. de Graaff)


Some of the mysterious pinpricks of light at the dawn of the Universe could be a type of object we've never seen before.

According to a new analysis of a "little red dot" (LRD) nicknamed The Cliff, these unexplained objects could be supermassive black holes wrapped in huge, dense clouds of gas, like an atmosphere surrounding a stellar core.

It's a very tidy explanation that solves a problem astronomers are struggling to reconcile: a 'break' in the LRDs' light that makes galaxies in the early Universe seem older than possible.

"We … conclude that the rest-optical and near-infrared continuum of The Cliff cannot originate from a massive, evolved stellar population with an extremely high stellar density," writes a team led by astrophysicist Anna de Graaff of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

"Instead, we argue that the most plausible model is that of a luminous ionising source reddened by dense, absorbing gas in its close vicinity. Currently, the only model capable of producing both the strength and shape of the observed Balmer break is that of a black hole star."

More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/giant-stars-with-black-holes-inside-them-may-have-been-detected-for-the-first-time