Science and Technology News

Unusual Black Hole Discovery

August 20 , 2026 12 hrs 0 min 13 0

An international team of astronomers found an unusual black hole from when the universe was about 660 million years old, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The object is one of the Little Red Dots (LRDs) and appears to be a rapidly growing black hole surrounded by a huge cocoon of hydrogen gas.
The observations suggest that the red colour may be caused by dense gas, rather than dust as previously thought.
The gas cocoon may help explain how some black holes grew very rapidly in the early universe.
The black hole is estimated to be surrounded by hydrogen gas with about 100 billion particles per cubic centimetre, extending several million kilometres around it.