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    JWST spots a strange red dot so extreme scientists can’t explain it

    December 2, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The discovery of strange, ultra-red objects—especially the extreme case known as The Cliff—has pushed astronomers to propose an entirely new type of cosmic structure: black hole stars. These exotic hybrids could explain rapid black hole growth in the early universe, but their existence remains unproven.

    In the summer of 2022, only a few weeks after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began delivering its first scientific images, astronomers noticed an unexpected pattern: tiny red points scattered throughout the new observations. These extremely compact, distinctly red objects appeared with remarkable clarity thanks to JWST’s sensitivity, and there were far more of them than expected...

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    Cosmic Simulation Reveals How Black Holes Grow and Evolve

    July 5, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This still shows an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole.
    This still from the simulation shows a supermassive black hole, or quasar, surrounded by a swirling disk of material called an accretion disk. Credit: Caltech/Phil Hopkins group

    A team of astrophysicists led by Caltech has managed for the first time to simulate the journey of primordial gas dating from the early universe to the stage at which it becomes swept up in a disk of material fueling a single supermassive black hole. The new computer simulation upends ideas about such disks that astronomers have held since the 1970s and paves the way for new discoveries about how black holes and galaxies grow and evolve.

    “Our new simulation marks the culmination of several years of work from two large collaborations started here at Caltech,” says Phil Hopkins, the Ira S...

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    First Detection of Secondary Supermassive Black Hole in a well-known Binary System

    June 7, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artistic illustration of OJ287 as a binary black hole system.
    Artistic illustration of OJ287 as a binary black hole system. The secondary black hole of 150 million solar masses moves around the primary black hole of 18 billion solar masses. A disk of gas surrounds the latter. The secondary black hole is forced to impact on the accretion disk twice during its 12-year orbit. The impact produces a blue flash which was detected in February 2022. In addition, the impact also induces the secondary black hole to bright bursts of radiation several weeks earlier, and these bursts have also been detected as a direct signal from the secondary black hole. Credit: AAS 2018

    An international team of astronomers observed the second one of the two supermassive black holes circling each other in an active galaxy OJ 287.

    Supermassive black holes that weigh sever...

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    Scientists Map Gusty Winds in a far-off Neutron Star System

    April 12, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    In black space, the accretion disk is represented as a flat swirling disk with blue, pink red colors, and in the middle of it is tiny, glowing white sphere, the neutron star. Behind the accretion disk is a large teal sphere, the sun-like star. A teal noodle flows from the star to the accretion disk, representing the material drawn away from the star.
    Caption: MIT astronomers mapped the “disk winds” associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star, represented as the teal sphere. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.
    Credits:Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT. Based on an image of Hercules X-1 by D. Klochkov, European Space Agency

    The 2D map of this ‘disk wind’ may reveal clues to galaxy formation.

    Astronomers have mapped the ‘disk winds’ associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.

    An accretion disk is a colossal whirlpool o...

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