NASA’s James Webb catches a supermassive black hole feeding

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured detailed images of a supermassive black hole actively feeding. A vast filament of gas spirals into the center of galaxy NGC 4696, ScienceDaily reports, where it races around a disk eight hundred light-years across at speeds exceeding six hundred kilometers per second. The observations suggest that black holes may recycle fuel by using jets to heat gas, then drawing the cooled material back toward the center.

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