Astonishingly, 660 million years after the Big Bang, a bright red dot has been discovered in one of the deepest regions ever captured by NASA/ESA/CSA’s James Webb Space Telescope. MIT astronomers now believe this could be the first confirmed example of a groundbreaking new class of astronomical objects: black holes.
The MoM-BH*-1 object captured by Webb Telescope. Image credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Naidu et al. doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10846-4.
MIT astronomer Rohan Naidu and his team uncovered this extraordinary object while exploring some of the universe’s earliest galaxies as part of Webb’s initiative to identify cosmic mirages.
This source, designated MoM-BH*-1, was nearly invisible in the Webb’s blue filter but radiated an intense glow in the red filter, marking it with one of the most extreme color signatures ever observed in a distant celestial body.
Using spectroscopy, astronomers determined the cause. MoM-BH*-1 exhibits the strongest “Balmer break” in redshift recorded, characterized by a swift drop in brightness at wavelengths typically linked to dense gas found in a star’s outer layers.
Ordinary starlight fails to produce such significant disruptions, making the intensity observed here several times greater than the reddest known stars.
The spectrum from MoM-BH*-1 also revealed broad emission from hydrogen gas along with deep absorption features that obstruct this emission. Together, these features suggest a gas density far surpassing that of typical stars.
According to Dr. Naidu, “The intensity observed in this celestial object features the deepest voids documented in any object, effectively ruling out ordinary stars as their source.”
The researchers speculated that they may be witnessing a “great atmosphere” of an entirely unprecedented nature on a grand scale.
Furthermore, MoM-BH*-1’s light showed an almost complete absence of metals or elements other than hydrogen and helium, rendering it a genuinely unique discovery.
To account for these observations, scientists theorized that the object is a colossal black hole, between 100,000 to 10 million times the mass of the Sun. It is enveloped by a dense, turbulent hydrogen gas cloud, spanning approximately 10 to 100 AU—comparable to our solar system.
Radiation emitted by the black hole’s accretion disk traverses this gas cocoon, absorbing and scattering light to generate the object’s distinct spectral profile, requiring minimal dust to account for its redness.
Remarkably, the light emitted from MoM-BH*-1 is significantly greater than what nuclear fusion could generate at such a size, eliminating the possibility of it being a typical star and instead indicating an actively feeding black hole, potentially surpassing the Eddington limit—the theoretical cap on how quickly a black hole can accrete material while countered by its own radiation.
Scientists also observed preliminary evidence that the object had increased in brightness by about 30% over roughly two months, a key characteristic of active black hole feeding.
Dr. Naidu stated, “The comprehensive understanding of this object is rapidly evolving.” He added, “We believe it harbors a central black hole with a mass 100,000 times that of the Sun, surrounded by an extensive gas envelope resembling a star the size of our solar system—it’s massive.”
“These little red dots were likely ubiquitous in the early universe but have seemingly vanished over time.”
The nature of these objects remains one of the most debated topics in the era of the James Webb Space Telescope.
For further details, read the full paper published in today’s edition of Nature.
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RP Naidu et al. 2026. A black hole enveloped in gas at the universe’s dawn, turned red by that gas. Nature, 656, 329-333; doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10846-4
Source: www.sci.news
