Astronomers have revealed the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) sharpest-ever image of the area around a black hole. The spectacular view could help solve a decades-long mystery while reversing a long-held belief about space's most extreme objects.
Since the 1990s, astronomers have observed a curious brightness in infrared wavelengths surrounding the active supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of some galaxies. Previously, they attributed these excess infrared emissions to the outflows — superheated streams of matter blasted from black holes.
