Galactic Collisions Fuel Supermassive Black Holes

Supermassive black holes obscured by dust are more likely to grow and release tremendous amounts of energy when they are inside galaxies that are expected to collide with a neighboring galaxy. The astronomers conducting this study were only able to detect the growing black holes using infrared light. The researchers developed a new technique to determine how likely it is that two galaxies are very close together and are expected to collide in the future. Data arriving from the James Webb Space Telescope over the coming years is expected to revolutionize studies in the infrared and reveal even more secrets about how these dusty black holes grow.