Black Hole Runs Out of Gas, Rapidly Shrinking Its Galaxy

Hubble Space Telescope view of the galaxy Markarian 509 with its bright AGN at its heart. In addition to J0218-0036, other galaxies have these objects, too. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Kriss (STScI) and J. de Plaa (SRON)

It is not often that astronomers can see large changes in the brightness of a galaxy within a few years. Most galaxies change in brightness (and other properties) over millions or billions of years. So, when images of the distant 10-billion-light-year galaxy J0218-0036 showed that it dimmed to a twentieth of its previous brightness in … Read more