Was the James Webb Telescope Broken? The Real Culprit Was a Monster Black Hole

Observations of a distant quasar reveal that supermassive black holes may suppress star formation across intergalactic distances.

Powerful radiation from active supermassive black holes – believed to sit at the center of nearly every galaxy – may do more than disrupt their own surroundings. According to new research led by Yongda Zhu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, this energy can also suppress star formation in galaxies located millions of light years away.

“Traditionally, people have thought that because galaxies are so far apart, they evolve largely on their own,” said Zhu, the first author of the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “But we found that a very active, supermassive black hole in one galaxy can affect other galaxies across millions of light-years, suggesting that galaxy evolution may be more of a group effort.”

Zhu describes this concept as a “galaxy ecosystem,” comparing it to connected ecosystems on Earth. “An active supermassive black hole is like a hungry predator dominating the ecosystem,” he said. “Simply put, it swallows up matter and influences how stars in nearby galaxies grow.”

Black holes have intrigued scientists and the public since they were first proposed in the early 1900s. These objects rank among the most extreme features of the universe. Their gravity is so intense that they can trap nearby material and even light. Some black holes, including the one at the center of the Milky Way, fall into the category of “supermassive,” meaning they contain millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun.

Although black holes themselves cannot be seen, they can become extraordinarily bright when actively feeding on surrounding gas and dust. As this material spirals inward, it forms a hot, rotating disk that releases vast amounts of energy. During this stage, known as a quasar phase, the black hole can radiate hundreds of trillions of times more energy than the sun, sometimes shining more brightly than its entire host galaxy.

Resolving a mystery

Early data from the James Webb Space Telescope suggested that surprisingly few galaxies surrounded extremely massive quasars in the young universe. That finding stood out because large galaxies are typically found in crowded regions rather than alone.

“We were puzzled,” said Zhu, “Was the expensive JWST broken?” he added with a laugh. “Then we realized the galaxies might actually be there, but difficult to detect because their very recent star formation was suppressed.”

This insight prompted a new question. Could intensely bright supermassive black holes not only alter their own galaxies, but also interfere with star formation in neighboring systems?

To explore this possibility, the researchers focused on one of the brightest quasars ever discovered, J0100+2802. It is powered by a supermassive black hole about 12 billion times as massive as the sun. Because its light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach Earth, astronomers observe it as it existed when the universe was less than 1 billion years old.

Using JWST, the team analyzed emissions from O III, an ionized form of oxygen that signals very recent star formation. Lower levels of O III indicate that the cold gas clouds needed to form new stars have been disturbed. The scientists found a noticeable difference among galaxies located within about one million light years of the quasar. Compared with more distant galaxies, those closer to the quasar showed weaker O III emission relative to their ultraviolet light, a pattern consistent with reduced recent star formation.

“Black holes are known to ‘eat’ a lot of stuff, but during the active eating process and in their luminous quasar form, they also emit very strong radiation,” said Zhu. “The intense heat and radiation split the molecular hydrogen that makes up vast, interstellar gas clouds, quenching its potential to accumulate and turn into new stars.”

Star Formation on an Intergalactic Scale

Stars require very specific conditions to form, including large reservoirs of cold molecular hydrogen, which acts as the raw fuel for star formation. Scientists already knew that quasars, often located at the centers of young, rapidly growing galaxies, can destroy this gas within their own host galaxies, shutting down local star formation. What remained unclear, however, was whether this destructive influence extended beyond a quasar’s home galaxy. By using the JWST to observe light from a quasar that existed more than 13 billion years ago, the team found evidence of suppressed star growth on a much larger scale.

“For the first time, we have evidence that this radiation impacts the universe on an intergalactic scale,” said Zhu, “Quasars don’t just suppress stars in their host galaxies, but also in nearby galaxies within a radius of at least a million light-years.”

This discovery would have been impossible with any other telescope, according to Zhu.

This is because by the time light from objects as distant as quasar J0100+2802 reaches Earth, the expansion of the universe has stretched its wavelengths far into the infrared. Previous telescopes could not clearly detect these faint infrared signals, making JWST uniquely capable of observing early-universe phenomena.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, likely once had its own quasar. It is not active today, but the researchers wonder how this quasar impacted the formation of our own galaxy, as well as the other galaxies in its local environment.

The team hopes to test whether the phenomenon is widespread across multiple quasar fields and better understand exactly how galaxies are affected by neighboring quasars and whether other, less obvious factors are at play, Zhu said.

“Understanding how galaxies influenced one another in the early universe helps us better understand how our own galaxy came to be,” he said. “Now we realize that supermassive black holes may have played a much larger role in galaxy evolution than we once thought – acting as cosmic predators, influencing the growth of stars in nearby galaxies during the early universe.”

Reference: “Quasar Radiative Feedback May Suppress Galaxy Growth on Intergalactic Scales at z = 6.3” by Yongda Zhu, Eiichi Egami, Xiaohui Fan, Fengwu Sun, George D. Becker, Christopher Cain, Huanqing Chen, Anna-Christina Eilers, Yoshinobu Fudamoto, Jakob M. Helton, Xiangyu Jin, Maria Pudoka, Andrew J. Bunker, Zheng Cai, Jaclyn B. Champagne, Zhiyuan Ji, Xiaojing Lin, Weizhe Liu, Hai-Xia Ma, Zheng Ma, Roberto Maiolino, George H. Rieke, Marcia J. Rieke, Pierluigi Rinaldi, Yang Sun, Wei Leong Tee, Feige Wang, Jinyi Yang, Minghao Yue and Junyu Zhang, 3 December 2025, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae1f8e

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