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    Dark stars could help solve three pressing puzzles of the high-redshift universe

    January 9, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Dark stars could help solve three pressing puzzles of the high-redshift universe
    UHZ1, a record breaking galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away, seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age. UHZ1 is puzzling in view of it harboring a supermassive black hole that could not have possibly been seeded even by regular stars, in view of its mass and very little time for the BH to grow. As such, UHZ1 is believed to be evidence for supermassive stars that—upon collapse—generate the supermassive black hole powering the quasar at its center. In this study, the authors show how UHZ1 could harbor a supermassive black hole seeded by the collapse of a dark star. The mechanisms identified by the authors are not restricted to UHZ1—it provides a pathway for explaining over massive black hole galaxies, of which UHZ1 is a prominent example...
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    Supermassive black holes show selective feeding habits during galaxy mergers

    December 24, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Black holes are notorious for gobbling up everything that comes their way, but astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that even supermassive black holes can be picky eaters, and this can have a significant impact on their growth.

    This discovery, now published in The Astrophysical Journal, was made by an international team of astronomers led by Makoto A. Johnstone, a Ph.D. candidate with the University of Virginia. The team used ALMA to study seven nearby galaxy mergers hosting supermassive black holes separated by only a few thousand light-years.

    How galaxy mergers affect black holes
    When two massive, gas-rich galaxies merge, gravity drives vast amounts of cold molecular gas toward the centers of both systems, where supermassive ...

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    How a Supermassive Black Hole Originates

    June 18, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Study points to a seed black hole produced by a dark matter halo collapse. Supermassive black holes, or SMBHs, are black holes with masses that are several million to billion times the mass of our sun. The Milky Way hosts an SMBH with mass a few million times the solar mass. Surprisingly, astrophysical observations show that SMBHs already existed when the universe was very young. For example, a billion solar mass black holes are found when the universe was just 6% of its current age, 13.7 billion years. How do these SMBHs in the early universe originate?

    A team led by a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has come up with an explanation: a massive seed black hole that the collapse of a dark matter halo could produce.

    Dark matter halo is the halo of ...

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    Breakthrough in Deciphering Birth of Supermassive Black Holes

    July 16, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Black hole image
    A research team led by Cardiff University scientists say they are closer to understanding how a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is born thanks to a new technique that has enabled them to zoom in on one of these enigmatic cosmic objects in unprecedented detail.

    Astronomers zoom in on black hole with one of the lowest masses ever observed in nearby. A research team led by Cardiff University scientists say they are closer to understanding how a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is born thanks to a new technique that has enabled them to zoom in on one of these enigmatic cosmic objects in unprecedented detail.

    Scientists are unsure as to whether SMBHs were formed in the extreme conditions shortly after the big bang, in a process dubbed a ‘direct collapse’, or were grown much later from ‘seed...

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