Powerful winds from early galaxies revealed by Webb

New James Webb Space Telescope observations of the merging galaxy CRISTAL-02, about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, show an enormous gas outflow (~1.5 billion solar masses) and a star-formation rate of ~260 solar masses per year, while gas is being expelled at >500 solar masses per year. The winds, driven by rapid star formation and supernovae (and possibly aided by a black hole), can energize and disperse molecular gas, quenching star formation. If the outflow continues, the galaxy could exhaust its fuel in under 100 million years, offering a window into a widespread mechanism that could explain the abundance of quiescent galaxies in the early universe and inform cosmological simulations—and it hints at similar futures for galaxies like the Milky Way when they collide with Andromeda.