"Supermassive black holes: Recycling champions with messy eating habits"

Astronomers have observed the feeding habits of a supermassive black hole in the active heart of a distant galaxy and discovered that it recycles material. The black hole consumes only around 3% of the matter flowing towards it, while the rest is pushed away by the energy of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) but eventually falls back to the black hole. This recycling process has been observed in the Circinus Galaxy, located 13 million light-years away from Earth, and could help scientists better understand how supermassive black holes grow.