Overview

• An international team reports in Astronomy & Astrophysics that nearly 60 hours of JWST spectroscopy across about 4,500 distant galaxies favor a “black hole star” interpretation.
• The proposed objects are supermassive black holes cloaked in hydrogen envelopes whose emitted light resembles that of cool stellar atmospheres rather than typical galactic starlight.
• An extreme source dubbed The Cliff, with a steep Balmer break and a lookback time of roughly 11.9 billion years, defied standard galaxy and obscured-AGN models and drove the new analysis.
• The spectra indicate emission dominated by very cold, dense gas instead of the million‑degree environments expected around conventional accretion onto black holes.
• Authors stress the idea remains provisional, with planned JWST follow‑up to test gas density and energy output and to weigh this model against alternatives.