Monster black hole is starving its host galaxy to death, James Webb telescope reveals

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted a gigantic black hole "starving" its host galaxy to death, astronomers say.

The supermassive black hole — located nearly 12 billion light-years away, at the center of GS-10578, or "Pablo's Galaxy" — is 200 billion times the mass of the sun.

Previous observations revealed that the black hole's host galaxy is "dead" — meaning it has stopped forming new stars — but previous telescopes lacked the accuracy to find the exact cause of this.

Now, the JWST has solved the case: Pablo's galaxy is being suffocated by its own giant black hole, which is ejecting gas from the galaxy before it has time to make new stars. The researchers published their findings Sept. 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

"We found the culprit," study co-lead author Francesco D'Eugenio, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "The black hole is killing this galaxy and keeping it dormant, by cutting off the source of 'food' the galaxy needs to form new stars."

Supermassive black holes typically sit in the centers of galaxies, periodically sucking in matter from their surroundings before spitting it out at near light speed, creating a feedback process that shapes how galaxies evolve.

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