James Webb finds MoM-BH-1 acting as star and black hole
Astronomers just found something pretty wild in space: MoM-BH-1, an object that acts like both a star and a black hole.
Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, they spotted it shining in the constellation Cetus.
MoM-BH-1 is super old, is believed to have existed about 660 million years after the Big Bang, and gives off energy that's 100 billion times more than any star we've seen.
Scientists propose gas-shrouded black hole
According to Dr. Rohan Naidu of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "That level of energy is much closer to what astronomers see from black holes."
Scientists think it might be a black hole wrapped in dense gas, making it look like a massive star.
This discovery could help explain how supermassive black holes formed and shaped early galaxies.