NASA's Webb telescope spots cosmic horror, because even deep space loves Bloodborne

What’s lurking in the depths of space? That’s the question which has both excited and terrified scientists and regular Earthlings alike for hundreds of years, and as technology continues to advance, it seems like we’re getting closer to uncovering the truth of whether or not there really is life in space.

Games like Bloodborne have helped paint a truly haunting picture of the cosmic horrors that could be out there. At this point, who’s to say we don’t have something similar to the Moon Presence chilling out somewhere at the edge of the universe? That’s not exactly a fun thought, I know, which is why many might be rather alarmed to hear that so-called “cosmic monsters” have been recently photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Uh oh.

Take a look at Bloodborne reimagined as a PS1-era game below.

As reported by Space.com, deep within a dense clusters of stars (hilariously known as a globular cluster), astronomers may have captured images of these monsters, which seem to have been created several hundred million years after the universe was first born. However, don’t panic - we thankfully don’t have ancient Bloodborne bosses on the loose hundreds of lightyears away. “Cosmic monster” in this context is a term which is being used to refer to supermassive stars.

To put into perspective how colossal supermassive stars are, Space.com states that they can be between 5,000 and 10,000 times larger than the Earth’s own sun, and are around five times hotter at their cores. However, they only have a maximum lifespan of around two million years, which is nothing in space terms. Globular clusters, for example, are usually between 10 and 13 billion years old. As explained by one of the members of the research team, the University of Barcelona’s Mark Gieles, the stars’ short lives have made it very difficult to actually track them down, and only traces of them remain in the clusters that can currently be studied.

So, how have these supermassive stars been found? Using infrared imagery on the very old GN-z11 galaxy, it was discovered that there's a very high proportion of nitrogen, which has been explained by the combustion of hydrogen at particularly toasty temperatures. Temperatures so toasty, in fact, that you’d need the core of a supermassive star to reach them.

All in all, it’s a huge discovery, even if it doesn’t consist of the cosmic monsters we were all thinking of. I’m personally very glad about that, though.

• The Elder Scrolls meets Bloodborne in upcoming cosmic horror