Astronomers have confirmed that supermassive black holes can deprive their host galaxies of the gas needed to form new stars, thanks to observations from the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (Webb).

"The [energy released from gas falling into the] the supermassive black hole is removing large amounts of gas very fast from the galaxy," D'Eugenio explained. "Without this gas, no new stars can be formed, so this galaxy is losing the `shine' of young and bright stars, and has already started it's long history of fading."

An artist's illustration of the longest black hole jet system ever observed. Nicknamed Porphyrion after a mythological Greek giant, these jets span roughly 7 megaparsecs, or 23 million light- years. That is equivalent to lining up 140 Milky Way galaxies back-to-back. Credit: E. Wernquist / D. Nelson (IllustrisTNG Collaboration) / M. Oei

Astronomers have detected a supermassive black hole starving its galaxy of gas, halting star formation in the early universe.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have spotted a huge black hole that is "starving" its host galaxy to death. GS-10578, more colloquially known as 'Pablo's Galaxy', is a large galaxy nearly 12 billion light-years away and has been known to be unusually 'dead' by astronomers for a while,