James Webb Space Telescope finds a shock near supermassive black hole (image) | Space

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have imaged the structure of dust and gas around a distant supermassive black hole, quite literally finding a “shock” feature.

The team discovered that energy heating this swirling cloud of gas and dust actually comes from collisions with jets of gas traveling at near-light-speeds, or “shocks.” Previously, scientists had theorized that the energy heating this dust comes from the supermassive black hole itself, making this an unexpected twist.

The galactic home of this particular supermassive black hole is ESO 428-G14, an active galaxy located around 70 million light-years from Earth. The term “active galaxy” means that ESO 428-G14 possesses a central region or “active galactic nucleus” (AGN) that emits powerful and intense light across the electromagnetic spectrum due to the presence of a supermassive black hole that is greedily feasting on matter around it.

The shock AGN finding was reached by members of the Galactic Activity, Torus, and Outflow Survey (GATOS) collaboration, who are using dedicated JWST observations to study the hearts of nearby galaxies.

“There is a lot of debate as to how AGN transfer energy into their surroundings,” GATOS team member David Rosario, a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, said in a statement. “We did not expect to see radio jets do this sort of damage. And yet here it is!”

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