When the James Webb Space Telescope started sending back images in 2022, something mysterious appeared: little red dots, speckled across the sky. They didn’t look like any known celestial objects, and astronomers began racing to figure out <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/space-little-red-dots/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">what they were.</a>
There was a lot of hot debate, but researchers are making progress—the dots appear to be black holes, but black holes like we’ve never seen them before. In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10846-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recent study,</a> astrophysicist Rohan Naidu and his team looked into one little red dot with the catchy name of MoM-BH*-1 and concluded it was a new cosmic category called a black hole star.
Guest:
Dr. Rohan Naidu is an assistant professor at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/space-little-red-dots/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sciencefriday.com.</a>
<a href="https://pod.link/73329284" target="_blank">Subscribe to this podcast.</a> Follow our show on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/scifri/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@scifri" target="_blank">TikTok</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/scifri" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, and <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/scifri.bsky.social" target="_blank">Bluesky</a> @scifri and <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/newsletters/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">sign up for our newsletters</a>. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: <a href="tel:+18774724374">877-472-4374</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Podurama

Home

Trending

Personal

Your Podcasts

New Episodes

My Files

Favourite Episodes

Tags (Folders)

Recently Played

Bookmarks

Followed Playlists

What are the mysterious ‘little red dots’ in images of space?

Science Friday

AI Chapters

AI Insights

Reviews