Researchers have identified the most distant dormant black hole known, dating back to the universe’s early history. Astronomers have long relied on brilliant quasars, supermassive black holes actively feeding on surrounding matter, to study the early universe. Yet these luminous objects reveal only part of the story. Now, researchers have detected the most distant dormant [...]A new cosmic bounce model suggests that remnants from a pre-Big Bang Universe may still exist today. What if some of the Universe’s oldest objects are actually older than the Big Bang itself? A new study from the University of Portsmouth suggests that ancient black holes may have survived from a time before the Universe [...]It’s not the kind of thing astronomers expect to see while observing the powerful effects of a distant supermassive black hole: an unprecedented UFO sighting.
However, that’s precisely what one group of scientists now reports in a preprint paper, who detail the successful detection of one of the strongest UFOs—a black hole phenomenon otherwise known as “ultra-fast outflows”—that astronomers may have ever seen.
The landmark detection was made possible with the XMM-Newton space observatory and NuSTAR X-ray telescope, which allowed the researchers behind the discovery to observe a luminous quasar with origins that date back to “cosmic noon,” revealing a pair of outflow wind components being blasted from the black hole in question.
Black holes have more than just large appetites for cosmic material: they also produce significant gas-driven winds from around their accretion disk.
These winds become known as ultra-fast outflows (UFOs) when their strength propels them to greater than ten percent of light speed, and astronomers currently believe they are an important part of what helps black holes regulate their growth, which may also hold for their host galaxies.
One way this occurs is that UFOs help to heat galactic gases that give rise to star formation, a quenching process that most astronomers believe occurred during a period called “cosmic noon,” which occurred between 1.6 and 3.5 billion years after the birth of the universe.
Astronomers can detect ultra-fast outflows based on the “dips” they create in their powerful gusts, which are caused by ionized iron present in their outflow gases. These gases also absorb X-rays along their path away from their black hole originators, which leave “fingerprints” in the form of absorption features that are detectable using X-ray telescopes.
Significantly, these “dips” manifest as a blueshift since they are shifted to higher energies as they move at such high speeds (again, roughly 10% of the speed of light). From the blueshifted energy signatures they comprise, astronomers can determine not only the presence of UFOs, but also the wind speed of their gusty outflows.
In the past, most detections of these high-powered cosmic phenomena have relied on gravitationally lensed quasars. These celestial objects occur when a galaxy or similar feature closer to Earth appears in front of them, magnifying the quasar’s light and significantly brightening its luminosity from our Earthly perspective.
However, lensing of this variety can also present problems, and so astronomers led by Giorgio Lanzuisi of INAF Bologna designed a special system to target more than a dozen hyper-luminous quasars at cosmic noon, as a means of getting a better feel for the dynamics of non-lensed quasars.
WISSHFUL is an XMM-Newton multi-year heritage program that Lanzuisi and his colleagues designed for this purpose, whose initial target became a quasar designated WISSH13, whose redshift at 3.294 marks the object’s existence as it appeared approximately 2 billion years after the Big Bang.
WISH13’s black hole also weighs in at close to 2 billion times that of our Sun, which causes it to shine far brighter than normally expected for an object of its estimated mass.
Their work began in the autumn of 2024 by combining observations from XMM-Newton and NuSTAR initially obtained in 2017. From these X-ray images of WISSH12, a pair of distinctive absorption features became evident, which the team determined to have been generated by two separate sources from within the same ultra-fast outflow.
These components were found to travel at different speeds: one moving at close to 30% of the speed of light, while the other at only about 10% of light speed. The slower of these two appears to have been an enduring component of the UFO, while the faster one showed signatures that indicated a more recent appearance. This could mean that it emanates from events that are shorter in duration.
By matching theoretical predictions of a layered wind structure surrounding the black hole, the researchers say their observations align with models that indicate a fast-moving inner “spine” launched from the accretion disk’s innermost regions. Meanwhile, a slower outer “sheath” is also believed to emanate farther from the black hole. The combined outflow components produce an estimated 21 to 24 solar masses of material annually.
Such figures, the team says, represent what is believed to be among the most massive and energetic ultrafast outflows ever observed, a discovery which also marks the highest-redshift ultrafast outflow yet detected in a non-lensed quasar.
Despite their remarkable energetic output, the team says these outflow winds seem to conform to the same essential relationships observed in active galaxies much closer to Earth, suggesting that the processes driving these outflows have remained remarkably consistent across cosmic time.
Going forward, the team says they hope to make additional observations of these powerful cosmic phenomena with help from the new Athena X-ray mission, which they say could help uncover similar winds in even more distant quasars.
The team’s discoveries were detailed in a recent paper, “The WISSHFUL program: the highest redshift UFO discovered in a non-lensed QSO,” which appeared at the preprint arXiv.org server.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
Scientists are exploring a fascinating idea: some of the brilliant stellar explosions seen across the universe may have been triggered by tiny black holes formed shortly after the Big Bang. A new study led by researchers at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) suggests that these mysterious objects, called primordial black […]
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Time seems like one of the most basic parts of everyday life. We use clocks to measure it, plan our days around it, and experience it as a steady flow from the past into the future. But according to some of the deepest theories in physics, time may not actually exist in the way we […]
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Using Webb’s NIRCam and NIRSpec instruments, astronomers have obtained the deepest spectrum ever taken of a little red dot.
The post Webb Delivers Strongest-Ever Case for ‘Black Hole Stars’ Lurking in Early Universe appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Scientists from Goethe University, Frankfurt, studying alternatives to black holes have suggested a mathematically viable formation mechanism for one proposed alternative called a ‘Gravastar.’
Although the team behind the newly proposed gravastar formation mechanism conceded that black holes still represent the simplest and most natural solution to gravitational collapse, they also suggest that the physics behind the alternative, which doesn’t require a single point where spacetime curves infinitely, called a “singularity,” can make them “easier to accept” than black holes.
If correct, and some or all black holes are, in fact, gravastars that mimic their expected properties, the work would establish a valid formation mechanism that could rewrite decades of accepted science and open a new field of research dedicated to understanding this previously misunderstood phenomenon.
According to standard cosmology theories, black holes form when extremely massive stars stop generating energy, allowing the force of gravity to take over and collapse the remaining matter into a single point, or singularity. Unfortunately, the research team behind the new study notes that “the laws of physics break down” within the singularity, making the formation of the resulting black hole a difficult phenomenon to predict.
“How can spacetime be curved infinitely at that point, the singularity?” asks the team’s statement announcing the new approach. They also note that no information escapes a black hole, including light, making studying its inner workings effectively impossible, and opening up the possibility that “black holes are in fact entirely different objects.”
Some options have been proposed, including ‘horizonless’ black hole mimickers. The team notes that these proposed options are “mathematically consistent alternatives” that also address the physics challenges posed by traditional black holes.
Still, how these alternative objects form has remained largely unclear. The research team said this lack of a formation mechanism constitutes “a significant open problem” since understanding how they form is the “first step” to determining if they truly exist.
In the new formation model, theoretical physicists Daniel Jampolski and Theoretical Astrophysics Professor Luciano Rezzolla from Goethe University showed that the collapse of a dying star may not go far enough that it reaches the point of no return, where “the collapse to a black hole is inevitable.”
Instead, the collapse slows down near a point scientists call the Schwarzschild radius, then stops. The result is what the team termed a “miniature universe” within the collapsing matter, which they compared to the dynamics of the Big Bang, which most theorists agree formed the entire universe.
Since the universe’s expansion was driven by dark energy, the new model proposes that the dark energy within the mini-universe establishes an “equilibrium” with the counteracting force of gravity, therefore halting the collapse of the star “before a black hole can form.”
“The Big Bang of the emerging universe can unfold once the star has already collapsed almost to the point of becoming a black hole,” explained Jampolski, who discovered the black hole alternative gravastar solution in his master’s thesis while under the supervision of Professor Rezzolla.
When discussing the impact of their proposed black hole alternative formation model, Jampolski said that from a mathematical and physics standpoint, it is “easier to imagine that the Big Bang occurs only at a very late stage, when matter has already been compressed to an extreme degree, thereby giving rise to new effects.” The team also notes that the unresolved behavior of matter in this environment “leaves room for new physics.”
Although the team’s model offers a mathematically sound formation for an alternative to black holes, Rezzolla notes that the search for gravastars or other alternatives “should not suggest a skepticism towards black holes,” which, he adds, “still represent the most natural and simplest solution to the fate of gravitational collapse.”
Instead, the Goethe professor explained, his general role as a scientist and his specific discipline as a theoretical physicist make it essential that he and his colleagues “maintain an unbiased approach towards what we do not know and hence explore both the accepted wisdom and the more exotic interpretations.”
“History teaches us that it is not unusual for the latter to become the former,” the professor added.
The paper “Formation of gravastars” was published in the journal Physical Review D.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
A new detector-based method clarifies how gravitational waves should be measured in an evolving universe. Imagine trying to measure a ripple on the surface of a pond while the pond itself is slowly changing shape. That is the challenge scientists face when they study gravitational waves not as isolated signals from colliding black holes, but [...]Dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in science. Scientists cannot see it directly, yet they believe it makes up most of the matter in the universe. Now, a new study suggests that dark matter may gather around supermassive black holes, forming large invisible clouds that influence their surroundings. Researchers from Virginia Tech have […]
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Astronomers using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope may have solved one of the biggest mysteries of the early universe. A strange object known as a “little red dot” appears to be a rapidly growing supermassive black hole hidden inside a thick cloud of gas. Little red dots were first discovered by the James Webb […]
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A new gravitational-wave catalogue reports 161 additional black hole mergers, bringing the total to 390 detections. Scientists at the University of Glasgow’s Institute for Gravitational Research are celebrating the release of a major new collection of gravitational wave discoveries, a milestone that highlights the rapid growth of gravitational astronomy. The latest Gravitational Wave Transient Catalogue [...]Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite, astronomers identified a possible remnant of ancient stellar explosion just a few dozen light-years from Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The post Astronomers May Have Found Supernova Remnant near Milky Way’s Central Black Hole appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of what astronomers call “little red dots” have intrigued researchers since their discovery in 2022.
Now, new data on the spectra of one of these dots, made possible with imagery obtained by Webb, may hold the answers researchers have long sought.
In a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of astronomers led by the University of Texas at Austin’s Vasily Kokorev revealed their intriguing observations of the little red dot GLIMPSE-17775 using the JWST.
Data collected by the JWST support the BH* scenario, the hypothesis that little red dots are supermassive black holes surrounded by a cloud of partially ionized gas.
The recent JWST observation of GLIMPSE-17775 is the deepest spectral view of a little red dot ever captured, spanning 40 spectral lines and offering a powerful opportunity to compare the data with various theories about the object’s origins. Born only about 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang, or about 12 billion years ago, the object hails from the universe’s early days.
As with many of science’s most interesting discoveries, this observation was a fortunate accident, captured as the JWST was observing the Abell S1063 galaxy cluster, located in front of GLIMPSE-17775 from our point of view.
Gravitational lensing magnifies GIMPSE-17775, allowing JWST a better look at the object despite its extreme distance, and making the 30-spectrum JWST captured equivalent to hours of observations.
“When we saw the spectrum for the first time, it was like having all the pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor,” said Kokorev. “We picked up each piece of the puzzle, measured the lines, and started combining the different pieces into a mosaic. Maybe a few pieces looked like nothing at first, but then a couple of them came together, and we realized that there was something there.”
First appearing at around 600 million years after the Big Bang, the mysterious little red dots have puzzled scientists since they first came to light. The black hole scenario is just one of several that researchers have proposed as a possible explanation, although it is currently gaining the most support as more data comes in.
“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models. But none of the previous little red dots have all of the pieces of evidence in the same place,” Kokorev said. “With GLIMPSE-17775, we can test these models because of how deep and amazing this source’s spectrum is.”
The researchers interpret the data as showing a rapidly accreting black hole covered by a dense gas cocoon that reprocesses the black hole’s light into the spectrum observed by JWST.
Comparing the spectra to various models revealed some intriguing evidence for the BH* scenario. The helium, oxygen, and hydrogen lines don’t fit a simple rotating gas cloud model, but do correspond to an electron scattering, a broadening effect associated with a dense, layered gas cocoon.
Other lines, such as the 16 iron lines, suggest a powerful energy source, which could indicate a rapidly accreting black hole. Additionally, helium absorption and fluorescence are seen in the spectrum, signs that a powerful energy source is enveloped in a dense medium.
Beyond this incredibly deep spectrum, other little red dot observations have been faint in X-rays, a form of emission that the gas cocoon, in the BH* scenario, is likely to absorb.
One strange quirk of GLIMPSE-17775 is that the spectrum was missing the portion that would indicate the little red dots’ signature dip in light emission, known as a Balmer break. However, supplementary data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope resolved this issue, identifying that interference from a giant host galaxy is the root cause.
“Everything fits, nothing is broken, and I think that makes the puzzle that is our universe even better,” Kokorev concluded. “Looking ahead, I’m eager to dive deeper and learn about what is powering the central engines of little red dots. While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.”
The paper, “The Deepest GLIMPSE of a Dense Gas Cocoon Enshrouding a Little Red Dot,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal on June 10, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
An ancient, massive black hole blinked, revealing a surprisingly mature 'cosmic engine.'A new mathematical breakthrough sheds light on how tiny black holes could emerge from critical states of spacetime. Black holes are often portrayed as cosmic giants, swallowing stars and shaping entire galaxies. But some of the most intriguing black holes predicted by physics could be far smaller than an atom. For decades, scientists have known [...]How supermassive black holes (SMBH) in the center of galaxies accrete material, how they feedback into the surrounding region, and how they regulate these to influence the evolution of their galaxies are all hot topics in astronomical/astrophysical research. Astronomers are nearly certain that all large galaxies like the Milky Way have a SMBH, and detailed […]
The post This is how supermassive black holes feed themselves appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
Scientists believe an unusual LIGO detection may be evidence of a primordial black hole, potentially linking these long-theorized objects to the mystery of dark matter. Scientists at the University of Miami believe they may be closing in on evidence for one of the most elusive objects in the universe: primordial black holes. While definitive proof [...]After a 50-year search, astronomers have uncovered evidence that Sagittarius A* -- the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole that resides at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy -- is blowing a hot cosmic wind into its surroundings, carving out a giant cavity near the Galaxy’s heart.
The post Astronomers Finally Find Milky Way’s Missing Black Hole Wind appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Magnetic fields may be the hidden force bringing both newborn stars and giant black holes together. New computer simulations suggest that magnetic fields play a crucial role in helping pairs of young stars form. The findings could explain why binary star systems are so common throughout the Milky Way and may even offer clues about [...]
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