Something in the young universe is shining like a star that should not be possible.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected a compact red object so luminous that ordinary nuclear fusion cannot plausibly explain it. Although the source has a star-like appearance and may be surrounded by gas on the scale of the solar system, it radiates roughly 100 billion times more energy than any known star could physically produce.

The leading explanation is far stranger: the glow may come from a rapidly feeding black hole buried inside an enormous, dense envelope of hydrogen.