James Webb telescope solves mystery of strange, 'starved' galaxy that died 'a death of 1,000 cuts' in the ancient universe

An image of galaxy GS-10578, or "Pablo's Galaxy", which astronomers think was starved of its star-forming gas due to a supermassive black hole. (Image credit: JADES Collaboration)

New observations of a strange galaxy show it was slowly starved to death by its own black hole.

Two telescopes peered deep into space at the galaxy GS-10578, nicknamed "Pablo's Galaxy," after the name of the astronomer who previously studied it. The galaxy is large for its age: roughly 200 billion times the mass of the sun, with most of its stars lighting up between 11.5 billion years and 12.5 billion years ago. (For reference, the universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old.)

"Pablo’s Galaxy appears to have 'lived fast and died young'," researchers wrote about the new work, published in Nature Astronomy on Monday, in a University of Cambridge statement. "It stopped forming new stars, despite its relatively young age, due to an almost total absence of the cold gas stars need to form."

The research team described the death as happening "by a thousand cuts," because the black hole heated up gas moving through the galaxy. This meant any cold gas was choked off from resupplying the galaxy, making it more difficult for stars to form.

"There was essentially no cold gas left. It points to a slow starvation, rather than a single dramatic death blow," lead author Jan Scholtz, from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, said in the statement.

—James Webb telescope finds that galaxies in the early universe were much more chaotic than we thought

—'Puzzling' object discovered by James Webb telescope may be the earliest known galaxy in the universe

The results came by analyzing data from both the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA revealed no traces of carbon monoxide, which is an indicator of cold, star-forming hydrogen gas, in the galaxy. JWST, meanwhile, showed the supermassive black hole shooting out neutral gas at 400 kilometers per second (nearly 900 mph). At such rates, the galaxy would have run out of star fuel in only 16 million to 220 million years, a fraction of the typical billions of years for stars to die out.

Pablo's Galaxy appears to be representative of galaxies from the young universe that appear to be aging faster than expected. "Before Webb, these were unheard of," Scholtz said. "Now we know they're more common than we thought – and this starvation effect may be why they live fast and die young."

Elizabeth Howell was staff reporter at Space.com between 2022 and 2024 and a regular contributor to Live Science and Space.com between 2012 and 2022. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.