Supercomputer simulations may finally explain Webb’s mysterious Little Red Dots
Simulations suggest many of JWST’s Little Red Dots could be rapidly growing black holes surrounded by extraordinarily dense gas in the early universe. Intense ultraviolet radiation can delay ordinary star formation, allowing supermassive stars hundreds of thousands of times the Sun’s mass to form and collapse into heavy black hole seeds. Those seeds briefly accrete at several to tens of times the Eddington rate, reproducing several properties astronomers observe in Little Red Dots without requiring more exotic formation scenarios. Some of the strangest objects uncovered by the James Webb Space Telescope may represent a fleeting stage in the birth of enormous black holes. Known as Little Red Dots, the compact objects appear throughout observations of the early universe. Their unusual colors, broad hydrogen emission and unexpectedly large inferred black hole masses have resisted a single explanation. Rather than proving that every Little Red Dot has the same origin, the simulations offer a self-consistent pathway that reproduces several defining observations. It begins with unusually massive stars and ends with black holes growing at extraordinary rates. Formation …
