NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Might Have Spotted Hidden Supermassive Black Holes

It appears that the JWST is peeking at a few inquisitive tiny red blinking points, the small old galaxies, which are luminous in infrared light. Since the initial sighting of the astronomers, who observed them in late 2022, their heads have been banging. A new research by an astrophysicist, Vadim Rusakov, of the University of Manchester, suggests that these suspicious little red dots could actually not be galaxies. Rather, the results describe them as possibly the supermassive black holes that are disguised as the latter, concealed by the veils of gases and dust that can be found in the early universe.

The mystery of the ‘little red dots'

According to Space.com, in late 2022, JWST images revealed tiny, faint red specks — ‘little red dots' — appearing within a billion years of the Big Bang and fading by about two billion years. Scientists debated their nature: were they ultra-compact star clusters or something stranger? Vadim Rusakov of Manchester University noted they “are simply too luminous and too compact to be explained by a large number of stars”, which would make them the densest known galaxies.

Hidden supermassive black holes?

The new study suggests each dot may cloak a growing supermassive black hole. The brightest knot in each dot shines with the power of ~250 billion suns but is contained in less than a third of a light-year – far too compact for a normal galaxy. The radiation was trapped by dense gas around the core, hiding the usual X-ray and radio signals. As Rusakov notes, the dots thus have “an almost perfect disguise that removes X-ray and radio emission”. The findings are reported in Nature (15 January 2026).