'Little red dot' in early Universe is a naked supermassive black hole

Astronomers directly measured the mass of a black hole in a "little red dot" observed when the universe was just 700 million years old, finding it is much too massive for its host galaxy, suggesting it may have formed before the galaxy itself developed. The James Webb Space Telescope spectra reveal that these little red dots are young supermassive black holes shrouded in dense cocoons of ionized gas. This discovery represents the most extreme example yet of a black hole outweighing its own galaxy and may provide clues to how supermassive black holes formed in the early universe.

Source: Ars Technica | 2026-05-27