Posted on 09/15/2025 12:15:16 PM PDT by Red Badger
Artist’s impression of a black hole star (not to scale). Mysterious tiny pinpoints of light discovered at the dawn of the universe may be giant spheres of hot gas that are so dense they look like the atmospheres of typical nuclear fusion-powered stars; however, instead of fusion, they are powered by supermassive black holes in their center that rapidly pull in matter, converting it into energy and giving off light. (Credit: T. Müller/A. de Graaff/Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)
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Object nicknamed ‘The Cliff’ leads astronomers to rewrite cosmic rules
In A Nutshell
* “The Cliff,” a compact red object 12 billion light-years away, shines with the brightness of billions of suns in a space only 40 parsecs wide.
* If it were packed with stars, they would collide about once a month, but no X-ray signals from such crashes have been detected.
* Researchers conclude The Cliff isn’t an ultra-dense galaxy but likely a black hole shrouded by dense gas, mimicking the light of ancient stars.
* The discovery could reshape ideas about how early black holes formed and grew so quickly after the Big Bang.
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HEIDELBERG, Germany — Astronomers studying mysterious objects called “little red dots” have made a startling discovery about one particularly bizarre specimen. What initially appeared to be a galaxy so jam-packed with stars that they would smash into each other about once a month turned out to be something else entirely: a “black hole star,” where a massive black hole wrapped in super-thick gas clouds creates an elaborate cosmic disguise.
The object, nicknamed “The Cliff,” sits so far away that its light has been traveling toward us for 12 billion years. That means we’re seeing it as it was when the universe was just a toddler. To understand how unusual this would be if it were really a star-packed galaxy, consider that stars in our own galaxy essentially never collide. Space is just too big and empty for such cosmic traffic jams.
But after months of analysis using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers concluded that The Cliff isn’t actually a galaxy full of stars at all. Instead, their study, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, proposes represents an entirely new type of cosmic object that has been fooling astronomers by mimicking the light signature of an ancient galaxy.
An Object That Breaks the Rules
Anna de Graaff, who led the research team from Germany’s Max Planck Institute, first encountered The Cliff while studying these puzzling little red dots that don’t fit any category astronomers had seen before. Through telescopes, they look exactly like their nickname suggests: tiny red specks scattered across images of the early universe.
The Cliff stood out even among these oddities. Despite appearing incredibly small, it shines with the brightness of billions of suns. To get a sense of the scale, astronomers calculated that all the stars within 130 light-years of our sun would need to be crammed into a space the size of our immediate solar neighborhood to match what they were seeing.
Little red dots like The Cliff could be one of two things: either really old galaxies packed with ancient stars, or black holes actively feeding on surrounding material. De Graaff’s decided to test the first possibility: could The Cliff really be a galaxy stuffed with more stars than should be physically possible?
Why The Cliff Can’t Be Just a Galaxy
In a stellar system that dense, stars would collide at a rate of about once per month, an extraordinary frequency compared to our own galaxy, where stellar collisions essentially never happen. These stellar crashes would heat up gas to millions of degrees, creating powerful X-ray signals that space telescopes can detect. The researchers note, however, it’s uncertain how much of this energy would actually be radiated versus absorbed or dispersed.
So the team pointed the Chandra X-ray telescope at The Cliff, expecting to see these telltale signs of stellar mayhem. The researchers also tested whether The Cliff might contain unusual types of stars, such as rare giants or supernovas, that could explain its strange properties. They ran the numbers on thousands of different stellar combinations.
They found nothing. No X-ray emissions, no signs of stellar collisions, no evidence that The Cliff contained the mind-boggling number of stars its brightness suggested. The absence of this telltale radiation strongly suggested that the ultra-dense stellar scenario was incorrect.
A New Type of Cosmic Object
After concluding the object couldn’t be a galaxy, the research team proposed it represents something entirely different: a “black hole star.” In this model, a massive black hole sits at the center, surrounded by extraordinarily dense clouds of gas 100 billion times thicker than what exists between stars normally.
This dense gas envelope would absorb and re-emit light from the central black hole in ways that mimic the signatures of old stars. The process creates what scientists call a “Balmer break, “a specific pattern in the light spectrum that was twice as strong in The Cliff as in any previously observed distant object.
“We argue that the Balmer break, emission lines, and absorption line are instead most plausibly explained by a black hole star scenario, in which dense gas surrounds a powerful ionising source,” the researchers wrote.
The black hole at the center would have to be feeding like there’s no tomorrow, gobbling up matter faster than physics textbooks say should be possible. This could explain both the object’s unusual light signature and its lack of X-ray emissions, since the dense gas would absorb most high-energy radiation.
How The Cliff Could Change Our View of the Early Universe
This discovery matters for more than just one strange object. Little red dots like The Cliff are surprisingly common in the early universe. Space telescopes find about one for every thousand galaxies they look at. If most of these aren’t actually galaxies but black hole stars instead, it would completely change how scientists think the universe grew up.
Right now, astronomers struggle to explain how black holes millions or billions of times heavier than our sun could have grown so large so quickly after the Big Bang. Black hole stars might be the missing piece of that puzzle, a phase of cosmic evolution that nobody knew existed.
The team admits their black hole star idea isn’t perfect. It still can’t explain everything about The Cliff’s light signature, especially in certain wavelengths. The real answer might involve additional pieces they haven’t thought of yet: maybe massive stars mixed in with the dense gas, or physics around black holes that scientists don’t fully understand.
But one thing is clear: The Cliff proves that the early universe was home to objects so exotic they push the limits of what current theories can explain. As space telescopes peer deeper into the cosmos, they’re likely to find more cosmic oddities that force scientists to rewrite the textbooks on how the universe works.
Paper Summary
Methodology
The research team used multiple space-based telescopes to study The Cliff, a compact red object located at redshift 3.55 (approximately 12 billion light-years away). They employed the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec instrument for spectroscopy and NIRCam for imaging, supplemented by Chandra X-ray Observatory data. The scientists performed detailed spectral analysis to measure the object’s “Balmer break”—a feature in starlight that indicates the presence of hydrogen absorption. They also conducted morphological analysis to determine the object’s size and used computer modeling to test whether the observations could be explained by conventional stellar populations or required alternative explanations like active galactic nuclei.
Results
The Cliff exhibited an exceptionally strong Balmer break—twice as powerful as any previously observed high-redshift object and significantly stronger than typical massive galaxies. The object appears extremely compact with an effective radius of approximately 40 parsecs. Spectroscopic analysis revealed broad hydrogen emission lines with velocities around 1,500 km/s, but notably weak metal lines. Despite the high implied stellar density, no significant X-ray emission was detected in either the soft (1–10 keV) or hard (10–30 keV) bands. Stellar population modeling failed to reproduce the observed spectral features, even when accounting for extreme dust attenuation and variations in stellar mass distribution.
Limitations
The study acknowledges several limitations in their black hole star model, most notably that it severely overpredicts the observed near- and mid-infrared light. The proposed model parameters also require extremely high gas densities that, while physically possible, represent extreme conditions. The research notes uncertainty in applying conventional black hole mass scaling relations to such unusual objects, and the possibility that additional components like massive stars might be necessary to fully explain the observations.
Funding and Disclosures
The research was supported by multiple international funding agencies including NASA through the Space Telescope Science Institute, the German Aerospace Center, the Danish National Research Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the International Space Science Institute. Several co-authors acknowledge fellowship support from NASA Hubble and other prestigious programs. The study declares no competing interests.
Publication Information
The research was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Volume 701, Article A168 (2025), with the DOI 10.1051/0004-6361/202554681. The paper was received on March 21, 2025, and accepted on June 30, 2025. The research was conducted by an international collaboration led by Anna de Graaff from the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie in Germany, with co-authors from institutions across the United States, Europe, and Australia.
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Red Hole Ping!....................
That big bang they mention was God clapping when He saw it was good after creation.
“..50 billion light years away..”
I’ll have to check it out next time I’m out that way.
“..12 billion light years away..”
I’ll have to check it out next time I’m out that way.
I believe the big bang was the fall of Lucifer, formerly God’s archangel in charge of the material things God created including the earth.
That is why the universe is dark. Lucifer, once an Angel of Light, is now the Devil and Satan, the Price of Darkness.
“Black hole sun, won’t ya come...” (sorry, couldn’t resist). :P
😁....................................
Such fantasy abounds.
We were all thinking it.
i was wondering what that little red dot was-
But ... but ... but ... but ... how could we possibly know it’s 12 billion light years away when the universe was created at 6 o’clock in the evening of the 23rd of October in the year 4004 BC?
“... i was wondering what that little red dot was-...”
It’s the same old thing as yesterday...
5.88 trillion miles X 12 billion
I can't even wrap my brain around that number
Mzybe, but im not touching it lol
“5.88 trillion miles X 12 billion”
It was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..................
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