Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have captured one of the clearest views yet of how an early supermassive black hole may grow within a network of young galaxies. The compact active galaxy, seen just a billion years after the Big Bang, lies beside a 12,000-parsec-long filament containing multiple galaxies that are expected to merge within a few hundred million years.

The findings, posted to the arXiv preprint server on July 6, suggest astronomers may be witnessing a short-lived phase in the evolution of rapidly growing black holes while also shedding light on how the first massive galaxies assembled in the early universe.

Too big for its galaxy
Since JWST began operating, astronomers have found a population of compact, actively feeding black holes in galaxies from ...

Quantum information is notoriously fragile. Internet traffic is anything but. Yet Northwestern University scientists have demonstrated they can peacefully coexist inside the same fiber-optic cable.

In a new...

The star that formed the Jellyfish nebula may have had a partner star that exploded 100,000 years earlier, according to international researchers, who say that this may be the first known discovery of a binary star system in which both stars have gone supernova.

The Jellyfish nebula, known as IC443, is the remnant of a star exploding in a supernova and leaving behind an expanding cloud of debris...

Chronic, low-grade inflammation in the body—a phenomenon known as “inflammaging” because it increases with age—has been linked to many of today’s leading causes of illness and death, including cancer, heart disease, metabolic conditions and neurodegenerative diseases. But scientists have struggled to understand what causes inflammaging or how to reverse its effects.

Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have identified the thymus, a small organ behind the breastbone that plays a central role in immune system development, as a key player in inflammaging. They discovered that thymulin, a hormone produced by the organ, keeps inflammation under control.

As we age, thymulin decreases and inflammation increases, allowing diseases like cancer to progress...