Astronomers are closer to solving the mystery of how supermassive black holes feed themselves, thanks to new images from the James Webb Space Telescope that provide the clearest view yet of gaseous filaments connecting a galaxy’s hot atmosphere to the rotating disk of gas that feeds its central black hole.

Michigan State University helped an international team, led by the Université de Montréal, perform the observations and interpret the data, finding answers to a question that has stumped scientists for decades. “JWST observations are offering us thousands of new facts and measurements,” said Megan Donahue, MSU University Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy.

Self-regulating black holes

Nearly every large galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its center, millions or even billions of times more massive than the sun. When these black holes actively pull in surrounding material, they switch on like cosmic engines, blasting powerful jets of energy outward that can sculpt the entire galaxy around them, slowing the birth of new stars and shaping how the galaxy grows over time.

But if the jets heat the surrounding gas, they should shut off the black hole’s own food supply. The leading hypothesis holds that the gas eventually cools, condenses into long, thin streamers called filaments, and falls back toward the galaxy’s center in a self-regulating cycle.

The team pointed JWST at NGC 4696, the central galaxy of the Centaurus Cluster, about 145 million light-years from Earth. With nearly eight hours of observing time using JWST’s NIRSpec instrument, they produced detailed maps of gas motion sharp enough to pick out features roughly 30 light-years across. The maps revealed an S-shaped swirl — a spinning disk of gas wrapped around the supermassive black hole, nearly 800 light-years across, with material whipping around at up to 600 kilometers per second — physically connected to one of the large infalling filaments stretching outward into the galaxy.

Closing the loop

Jets from the black hole pump energy into the surrounding gas, which eventually cools, becomes unstable, and collapses into long filaments stretching thousands of light-years. Magnetic forces slow the gas’s rotation as it falls, steering it inward, where it accumulates into a spinning disk that feeds the black hole — which fires its jets again, restarting the cycle. “It’s been really exciting to participate in this project,” said Mark Voit, MSU Physics and Astronomy Professor.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
DOI: 10.17909/yqjb-gg89
Article Title: JWST reveals how black holes are fed: kiloparsec-scale multiphase filaments feed sub-kiloparsec circumnuclear disks
Publication Date: July 14, 2026

Source: EurekAlert