“Mirage or Miracle” (MoM) tagged posts

JWST spots a bizarre “black hole star” 100 billion times brighter than a star

Three images show a “Star” as a cut-away sphere with a yellow core; a “Black Hole Accretion Disk” with black core and blue pancake spiral; and the “Black Hole Star,” an amorphous red cloud with a black center.
Stars (left) can be thought of as a dense ball of gas powered by nuclear fusion at their centers. Black holes (center) typically grow by consuming matter via a pancake-like accretion disk. Black hole stars (right) represent a new kind of object — nascent black holes enshrouded in dense gas such that they effectively radiate in a star-like manner. The accreting black hole, as the power source, plays the role of nuclear fusion, and the dense surrounding gas acts similarly to a pseudo-photosphere.
Image: iStock; Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT

Astronomers may have uncovered an entirely new cosmic object: a gigantic “black hole star” that could explain the mysterious red dots filling the early universe...

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