James Webb Space Telescope Little Red Dots May Be Primordial Black Holes
Tiny, intensely red cosmic objects discovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope could be primordial black holes born before the first stars formed, according to recent research published in Physical Review Letters, Space reported.
“A black hole is an object born from the gravitational death of a star. Primordial black holes are a very different story,” study team member Valerio De Luca of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University said in a statement.
“They come from the physics of the early universe that predates the first stars, when the universe was expanding exponentially in time and space,” De Luca added. Scientists have theorized about primordial black holes since Stephen Hawking proposed them in the 1970s, but no hard evidence has emerged.
Simulating Early Cosmic Environments
Separate simulations performed using Japan’s ATERUI III supercomputer suggest these Little Red Dots may be rapidly growing black holes that took advantage of unique early universe conditions, according to ScienceDaily. Sunmyon Chon of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics led the supercomputer research.
The simulations show that intense ultraviolet radiation from nearby galaxies prevented ordinary stars from forming inside specific gas clouds, forcing gas to collapse into single supermassive stars instead. Those massive stars then created black hole seeds surrounded by thick disks of dense gas.
“The simulations indicate that Little Red Dots could arise naturally from the environment of the young cosmos, where black holes were able to grow at extraordinary rates,” ScienceDaily reported. These simulated objects grew dozens of times faster than modern black holes.
Primordial Black Holes Likely Formed QSO1 Through Gas Consumption
De Luca and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins focused their modeling on QS01, located 13.1 billion light-years from Earth as it appeared 700 million years after the Big Bang, Space reported. This specific Little Red Dot stands out because it consists almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
The team evaluated three formation scenarios and determined the most likely path involved a smaller primordial black hole consuming surrounding gas and energy until it reached the size of QSO1. Cosmological constraints limit how many primordial black holes can exist in a given cluster, according to team member Loris Del Grosso.
“The door was open on this theory — that Little Red Dots could be primordial black holes,” Del Grosso said, as reported by Space. “We’ve now cracked it open a little farther by showing some scenarios are more likely than others.”
Expanding the Search to More Objects
Del Grosso and his research team intend to examine roughly 100 additional Little Red Dots spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope to check how many started as primordial black holes. Finding evidence would help resolve how supermassive black holes containing millions or billions of solar masses appeared less than 600 million years after the Big Bang, ScienceDaily reported.
“We don’t have a clear understanding of what happens in the early universe right after the Big Bang,” De Luca concluded, according to Space. “If primordial black holes do exist, then something had to happen to make them in the first place, which would be a groundbreaking discovery in physics.”
Frequently Asked Questions About Little Red Dots
What are Little Red Dots?
Little Red Dots are tiny, extremely red cosmic objects discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe. Recent simulations suggest they represent an early stage of rapid black hole growth.
How far away is QS01?
QS01 is located approximately 13.1 billion light-years from Earth, viewed as it existed roughly 700 million years after the Big Bang, according to Space.
When was the primordial black hole study published?
The research by the Johns Hopkins University team was published in June in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Which supercomputer was used for the simulations?
Researchers used Japan’s ATERUI III supercomputer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan to model early universe gas cloud collapses.
Related reading