Observations made using the telescope named after James Webb opened a window to humanity into a previously unknown period of the childhood of the universe. All previous observations made it possible to establish certain models of the evolution of stars and galaxies. Now “Webb” is destroying these ideas, reminded by a new discovery: the telescope observed an extremely rapid disappearance of star formation in a galaxy that existed only 700 million years after the Big Bang.

Our models of the evolution of galaxies describe star formation processes in galaxies very well. Even more surprising was the discovery of a galaxy with star formation that had completely and seemingly forever extinguished, 700 million years after the Big Bang. Two processes are most likely to have led to this result: first, a supermassive black hole may have formed at the center of the galaxy, whose radiation would push matter away from the host galaxy, and second, stars might have evolved in this way. He said that they would quickly consume all the supplies and then the process would freeze.

In general, star formation activity in galaxies is expected to gradually decrease. But star formation stopped surprisingly early in this galaxy at redshift z = 7.3, making it a rare discovery. According to Webb’s data, this galaxy experienced a brief burst of star formation between 30 and 90 million years ago and stopped forming stars 10 to 20 million years before Webb discovered it.

The theory allows star formation to stop and stagnate for a long time, but then it usually continues in one form or another (stars explode and form new ones from the remnants), in which case scientists do not observe this and this leaves them in a dead end.