When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Christmas Day in 2021, it faced a whole host of intriguing questions. By the time it finally launched, astronomers had a big list of targets begging for the type of detailed observations that only the powerful infrared space telescope could perform. One of the targets was an ancient, massive galaxy that’s basically dead and forms no new stars. The results are in, and an international team of astronomers know what happened to the quiescent galaxy. The growth and evolution of galaxies is a key field of study in astronomy. How did we get from the Big Bang to today, when massive galaxies like our own Milky Way populate the Universe? Astronomers have learned that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the heart of massive galaxies and have shaped their galaxies in powerful ways. SMBHs create powerful active galactic nuclei (AGN) in galaxies’ cores. As an SMBH draws material toward it, the material collects in an accretion disk. T
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