How giant stars crashing into black hole envelopes could reveal the secrets of mysterious red dots?

Astronomers propose that little red dots—mysterious compact objects found by JWST—host supermassive black holes wrapped in thick gaseous envelopes surrounded by stars. When red supergiants scatter into plunging orbits, they collide with these envelopes, creating detectable flares. At rates around 0.3 per year per object, such collisions could be spotted by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, offering rare direct measurements of envelope mass.