Is this the reason behind hundreds of little red dots in the sky?

What is causing those little red dots? (Picture: Getty/Metro)

Since 2023, scientists have discovered about 300 so-called little red dots looking down at us.

These dots – sometimes called rubies – have been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, sometimes only taking up one pixel in photos.

We have no idea what they are for sure – and what makes these specks odd is that they’re really, really old. Almost as old as time itself.

Now researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore think they have the answer – a never-before-seen type of black hole, according to their paper in Physical Review Letters.

‘They are very compact, red objects, seen as they were within roughly the first billion years after the Big Bang,’ the study’s co-author, Loris Del Grosso, tells Metro.

‘At first they were puzzling because they did not fit either of the obvious explanations.’