Webb Telescope's 'Little Red Dots' May Be Black Hole Stars, Igniting Fierce Debate
Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar over 'Little Red Dots'
The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted hundreds of tiny, brilliant red objects called 'little red dots' that could upend black hole physics. Two teams argue that a pair of these dots are 'black hole stars'—colossal hydrogen cocoons powered by a black hole at their core, potentially the birth of supermassive black holes. But other astronomers insist the data still fits standard black holes, sparking a polarized debate.
We are seeing the seed. This is the birth of potentially every massive black hole in the universe.
- jahnu
One thing worth noting is our popular notion of what a star seems to be is quite different from what astronomers have.
One example, Canis Majoris has a radius of about 1420 solar radii. But its mass is roughly
17±8 times the mass of the Sun and therefore an average density of 5.33 to 8.38 mg/m3. “It is over 100.000 times less dense than Earth’s atmosphere at sea level.”
- benji-york
Any decent human being would have called these Black Hole Suns.
- itsalwaysgood
Perhaps they are somehow related to the elusive white hole: exit points of black holes.
Fuel for a Big Bang, if you can imagine. A universe within itself.
The article says they're sucking up gas though so I don't know. The arrow of time is weird. It would feel elegant to me, but I'm way out of my league.
The imagined scenario only works if you picture all black holes 'twisting time' towards its beginning.
Sort of like recursion, or a tesseract, where there's one beginning and many endings.
- JumpCrisscross
Is there an experiment that could resolve this? Literally resolve these objects better, or otherwise distinguish between these hypotheses?
Is there anything behind these objects they could lens?
- debo_
Soundgarden was apparently prophetic with their hit song "Black Hole Sun."