Michael Reefe

Astronomers used the infrared telescope and the old Hubble to discover a gaping void in the center of a galaxy in the Abell 402 cluster, as if an invisible tugboat had pulled billions of stars out of there. The missing mass equals two billion suns: it's not a cloud but a real lack of stars.

Cosmic black holes at the centers of galaxies are like giant banyan trees: their aerial root‑filaments stretch for kiloparsecs to harvest nourishing matter. For decades astronomers have debated: how does cooling gas from cluster atmospheres fall into the sphere of influence of a supermassive hole?