How Black Holes Slowly Starve Galaxies

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope and ALMA have discovered one of the oldest ‘dead’ galaxies in the universe, revealing that supermassive black holes can kill galaxies through slow starvation rather than violent destruction. The galaxy, nicknamed ‘Pablo’s Galaxy’, formed most of its 200 billion solar masses of stars between 12.5 and 11.5 billion years ago before abruptly stopping, not because its black hole blew away all the gas in one catastrophic event, but because it repeatedly heated incoming material over multiple cycles, preventing fresh fuel from ever replenishing the galaxy’s star forming reserves.