Among the many surprises uncovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, one of the strangest has been a large population of tiny, intensely red objects known as Little Red Dots. Their true nature has remained unclear. Now, new simulations performed with Japan's ATERUI III supercomputer suggest these objects may be rapidly growing black holes that took advantage of conditions in the early Universe that no longer exist today.
The findings do not require unusual physics or highly unlikely events. Instead, 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. The research was led by Sunmyon Chon of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.
The team used the ATERUI III supercomputer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan to carry out some of the most detailed cosmological simulations yet of the early Universe. The simulations began on the scale of a young galaxy and then progressively focused on smaller regions, eventually reaching individual clouds of gas. This demanding approach required the high-resolution computing power of ATERUI III.
The results suggest that intense far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation from nearby galaxies can prevent ordinary stars from forming inside some gas clouds. Instead of breaking apart into many smaller stars, the gas can collapse into a single supermassive star. That enormous star can then collapse and create a black hole seed.
Once these black hole seeds form, the simulations show that they can become surrounded by thick disks of dense gas. These gas-rich environments trap radiation and allow the black holes to consume material much more efficiently than black holes can in the modern Universe. Under these conditions, the black holes can grow dozens of times faster than would be possible today.
The properties of these simulated black holes closely resemble the Little Red Dots (LRDs) observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). That similarity suggests the mysterious red objects could represent an early stage of extremely rapid black hole growth. Astronomers have struggled for years to explain how supermassive black holes appeared so early in cosmic history.
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