JWST may have seen black holes suppressing the creation of new stars

Supermassive black holes seem to stop stars forming in their enormous host galaxies – and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have caught them in the act for the first time.

Many of the most massive galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood are in a “quiescent” state, where no new stars seem to have been born for a long time. Astronomers have long suspected that the supermassive black holes at the centre of many galaxies might be responsible by somehow disturbing the clouds of gas …