A team of scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer through the veil of dust surrounding a faraway supermassive black hole, revealing that energy around the hole comes from jets of gas colliding together at near light speed.
The Webb telescope, the most powerful ever, targeted the giant black hole at the center of a galaxy known as ESO 428-G14 about 70 million light-years away, according to Space.com.
As with our home galaxy, the Milky Way, a supermassive black hole sits at its center, gobbling up any matter in its path. A black hole is an area with such strong gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape the hole's grasp.
The team turned the telescope toward a hot cloud of dust and gas swirling around the black hole. What they saw revealed that energy in the cloud was generating jets of gas crashing into each other at light speeds, heating up the veil of dust. Dust near the black hole spreads out along the gas jets, which may be responsible for the shape of the dust that scientists see around the black hole, the team found.
Jets of gas surrounding a supermassive black hole can stretch anywhere from a few light-years across to beyond the reaches of their home galaxy, according to the Webb telescope's findings.
Scientists earlier had thought the energy heating the dust clouds came from radiation caused by the black hole itself.
"We did not expect to see radio jets do this sort of damage. And yet here it is!'' David Rosario, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University who co-wrote the study, said in a news release from the university on Tuesday.
The discovery came from a project called the Galactic Activity, Torus, and Outflow Survey (GATOS) that aims to uncover the secrets of the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. The team published its findings in the science journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Tuesday.
Never seen before images: NASA releases eye-popping images of nebulae, galaxies in space
Almost all galaxies have supermassive black holes, also called active galactic nuclei, or AGN, lying at their center, scientists now believe. These black holes grow as they consume planets, stars, gas and even other black holes that lie in their path.
Supermassive black holes also feed on the cloud of spinning particles and gas surrounding them, also called an accretion disk.
Light can't escape a black hole, making it impossible to get a direct view through a telescope. But scientists can learn about a black hole by turning their sights to these clouds of gas.
The Webb telescope uses infrared waves to pick up information on these clouds and allows scientists a glimpse through them at the galaxy's center.
Can you fall into a black hole? NASA simulations provide an answer
Supermassive black holes, the largest type of black holes, have a mass more than 1 million times that of our sun, according to NASA. Researchers think they may form alongside their home galaxy. The first supermassive black holes likely formed soon after the big bang gave birth to the universe.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: James Webb Telescope reveals mystery about energy around a black hole
