James Webb's little red dots are young black holes

A University of Copenhagen team reports that small red points seen in James Webb Telescope images are young black holes enshrouded in dense ionized gas, based on a study published in Nature on January 14.

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen report that the small red points seen in James Webb Space Telescope images are young black holes wrapped in dense ionized gas. The team's results were published in Nature on January 14. Webb's first images, released in December 2021 from about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, showed the red points among stars and galaxies and did not fit existing models. The objects appear during the universe's first few hundred million years and seem to vanish about a billion years later. What researchers report: - The features nicknamed "little red dots" are interpreted as young black holes encased in dense ionized gas. - The analysis was led by the Niels Bohr Institute's Cosmic Dawn Centre and published in Nature on January 14. - Researchers identified hundreds of these objects in Webb data, seen in the early universe. - The team finds the black holes are smaller than earlier estimates, with reported masses up to about 10 million times the mass of the Sun. - The red color is explained as hot radiation shining through the surrounding gas while the black holes accrete material and drive outflows. Summary: The finding offers a new observational view of black holes in a rapid growth phase and helps address how very large black holes could exist within the first billion years after the Big Bang. Undetermined at this time.