Roots of the Cosmic Banyan: How Black Holes Feed ✦

Original: "JWST reveals how black holes are fed: kiloparsec-scale multiphase filaments feed sub-kiloparsec circumnuclear disks"

arXiv:2606.06620v1 · 2026-06-04 · CC BY · ⏱ 1 min · Galaxies High Energy

JWST reveals: gas filaments, like aerial roots of a banyan, channel matter straight into the disk feeding a supermassive black hole.

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At the center of galaxy NGC 4696, a system resembling a banyan tree has been discovered. Gas filaments, like aerial roots, stretch for hundreds of parsecs to feed a rotating disk around a supermassive black hole. Until now, tracing this pathway was impossible — JWST has for the first time seen the continuous kinematic connection. Now it’s clear: black holes don’t just suck in everything around them; they receive matter through ordered structures. A similar bridge has been found in galaxy NGC 1275, meaning this is a universal mechanism. Perhaps we are on the way to understanding how AGN jets regulate the life of the largest galaxies — and how to halt cooling in clusters.

🎯 Without the “heating” provided by the central black hole’s jets, the hot gas in the Centaurus cluster (tens of millions of degrees) would collapse into cold clouds and stars within just a few million years.

🎬 The image of gas filaments feeding a black hole echoes the “fountain” of matter in Fred Hoyle’s novel “The Black Cloud,” where cosmic clouds become the architects of destiny.

r_{\text{inf}} = \frac{G M_{\text{BH}}}{\sigma^2}

The black hole’s gravitational influence dominates the motion of stars inside this radius.

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Roots of the Cosmic Banyan: How Black Holes Feed ✦