Overview
- The international team, led by Vadim Rusakov at the University of Manchester, modeled dozens of these compact objects using James Webb infrared data.
- Electron scattering in dense gas cocoons explains the sources’ extreme redness and compact appearance while muting expected X‑ray and radio signals.
- The black holes are estimated to be roughly 100 times less massive than some earlier interpretations implied, easing tensions with early-universe growth models.
- The work proposes a cocoon phase that enables rapid, obscured black-hole growth in galaxies only 600 million to 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.
- An independent News & Views by Rodrigo Nemmen supports the interpretation yet calls for larger samples and multiwavelength follow-up to resolve remaining gaps, including unusually weak X‑ray detections.