JWST found an object in the early universe whose dense hydrogen cocoon made it look eerily like an enormous star — until astronomers realized it was radiating roughly 100 billion times the Sun’s luminosity, with a growing black hole hidden inside.

MoM-BH*-1's extreme Balmer break shows how dense hydrogen can reprocess an accreting black hole's light into a spectrum with the outward appearance of an enormous star. The post JWST found an object in the early universe whose dense hydrogen cocoon made it look eerily like an enormous star — until astronomers realized it was radiating roughly 100 billion times the Sun’s luminosity, with a growing…