A new image taken by the Hubble Telescope shows a galaxy strangled by tentacles of gas and dust. Such a strange and whimsical shape of this celestial object is caused by a supermassive black hole located in the center of the galaxy, and this black hole is killing the galaxy.
The galaxy was numbered NGC 4696 and is 150 million light-years away. It is a standard ellipse in shape, but it also has remarkable streaks of bending filaments of dust and ionized hydrogen. A new study suggests that a black hole in the center of the galaxy is to blame for these features. It also prevents the galaxy from creating new stars, which means, in fact, NGC 4696 is dead.
With the help of Hubble, scientists from Cambridge were able to measure these dusty filaments, and found that they are about 200 light-years across, and 10 times the density of the surrounding gas, and they bind gas in the galaxy to its core.
The energy generated by the black hole heats up the nearby gas, sending streams of incandescent matter outward and dragging away filamentous material, and even the galaxy's magnetic field, along with it.
As a result, the magnetic structures that permeate the celestial body prevent the gas from creating new stars. Without new stars, the currently existing stars in the galaxy will eventually grow old and disappear, and thus all celestial formation will come to an end.