Space & Astronomy

Astronomers discover an entirely new type of astrophysical object

By T.K. Randall
August 17, 2026

Image: James Webb Space Telescope
Credit: NASA/dima_zel/NOIRLab / CC BY 4.0 (adapted) The vast universe is still throwing up surprises - as evidenced recently by the discovery of a completely new type of object - one that is putting out an unfathomable amount of energy.

Spotted by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, this distant anomaly is essentially an enormous star (comparable in size to our entire solar system) that is putting out 100 billion times more energy than any star should be able to.

Dating back to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, this object is now thought to be an amalgamation of a star and a black hole - something that has been dubbed a black hole star.

Most likely, it consists of a huge cloud of dense gas powered by a central black hole."Our picture of this object is evolving very rapidly," said lead study author Rohan Naidu.

"We think there is a central black hole that is 100,000 times as massive as the sun."

"And around this black hole, there would be this very extended envelope of gas that looks like a star the size of the solar system. It's huge."

Black hole stars seem to exist exclusively in the early universe, so they are perhaps a byproduct of the Big Bang itself, with no more being created after that time.

Exactly how long they last for remains, for now at least, unclear.

Source: Phys.org

Tags: Black Hole, Star