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Black holes can squash star formation, James Webb Space Telescope finds

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope found evidence that supermassive black holes suppress star formation in maturing galaxies.

The team used the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), analyzed 19 galaxies that are part of the Spiderweb protocluster, one of the best studied galaxy groups in the universe, which lies some 11 billion light-years away from Earth.

They found that galaxies that appear to have supermassive black holes at their hearts produce stars at a much slower rate than those without such black holes. The findings might help fill a long-standing gap in our understanding of galaxy evolution.

Stars form when massive clouds of cold hydrogen gas collapse under the weight of their gravity. As the density of matter inside the collapsing cloud increases, its temperature soars. That ultimately triggers nuclear fusion, which brings the stars to life.

This process causes the ionization of hydrogen atoms, a mechanism that emits a specific type of radiation visible in the light spectra obtained by sophisticated instruments such as the JWST's NIRCam.

Source: www.space.com

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