JWST captures near dead galaxy in ancient universe. 'We found the culprit'

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has caught a supermassive black hole in the early universe starving its galaxy to death. Galaxies die when star formation no longer happens. Astronomers have believed for a long time that the central supermassive black holes might be to blame for this.

When the supermassive black hole residing at the centre of a galaxy eats up all the gas and dust, the building blocks of stars, the galaxies can be "killed" prematurely.

The "galactic death by starvation" captured by JWST happened very quickly because of the creation of two million miles per hour winds of gas.

This is the first time such an effect has been captured on camera, which proves that galaxies can be starved to death. A team of researchers led by University of Cambridge scientists presented the findings.

This early galaxy seen by JWST is officially named GS-10578. It has been nicknamed "Pablo’s Galaxy" after the team member who proposed to observe it in detail.

Pabalo's galaxy is located around 11.5 billion light-years away from Earth. What the astronomers see today transpired just 2.3 billion years or so after the Big Bang.

"Based on earlier observations, we knew this galaxy was in a quenched state: it's not forming many stars given its size, and we expect there is a link between the black hole and the end of star formation," team member Francesco D’Eugenio from Cambridge's Kavli Institute for Cosmology said in a statement.

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"However, until the JWST, we haven't been able to study this galaxy in enough detail to confirm that link, and we haven't known whether this quenched state is temporary or permanent."

Dead galaxy in early years of universe

The galaxy is about the size of the Milky Way and is unusually humongous for this period in the early universe. It is also strange to see a dead galaxy at this time. Researchers say that it birthed most of its stars between 12.5 billion and 11.5 billion years ago.

"In the early universe, most galaxies are forming lots of stars, so it's interesting to see such a massive dead galaxy at this period in time," team member Roberto Maiolino, also from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, said.

Using JWST's data, researchers determined that the supermassive black hole at the heart of Pablo’s Galaxy is pushing vast amounts of gas away at speeds of 2.2 million miles per hour.

They noted that the mass of the gas stream from Pablo's Galaxy was greater than the gas needed to build the base for new star formation. This showed that this galaxy's supermassive black hole is quenching star birth.

"We found the culprit," D’Eugenio said. "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."