Little Red Dots (LRDs) are compact, reddened sources discovered in the early Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), whose nature is still under debate.

In a News & Views article published in Nature, Dominik Schleicher (Sapienza University of Rome) and Rodrigo Herrera-Camus (University of Concepción, Chile) discuss new observations of the object MoM-BH*. Its spectrum points to a supermassive black hole that is actively accreting matter while embedded in extremely dense, turbulent gas.

The result suggests that the characteristic red colour could be produced by gas rather than dust, providing a new clue to the nature of Little Red Dots and to the rapid growth of black holes in the early Universe.

Authors: Dominik Schleicher is in the Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome and  Rodrigo Herrera-Camus is in the Department of Astronomy, University of Concepción, Concepción, Chile