Astronomers led by MIT reported in a Nature paper published on August 12, 2026, that a very bright red dot seen by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, may be an entirely new type of source, which they call a "black hole star." The team proposes that the object, named MoM-BH*-1, most likely consists of a central black hole about 100,000 times as massive as the sun, wrapped in a dense, star-like envelope of hydrogen roughly the size of the solar system. It would be powered by the black hole rather than nuclear fusion and would emit roughly 100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically produce.

The team observed a deeply pronounced "Balmer break" and almost no sign of elements other than hydrogen and helium. Simulations suggested dense hydrogen alone could produce the red color without dust, and adding an accreting black hole best matched JWST's brightness measurements. The researchers suggest such objects could explain other "little red dots" common in JWST images, though MoM-BH*-1 stands out for appearing to outshine its host galaxy. The identification is a proposed interpretation based on simulations, not a confirmed result.