Almost every galaxy in the local Universe seems to contain a supermassive black hole. There's a direct relationship between the two. Astronomers have wondered if this relationship existed in the Universe's earliest times, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Researchers studied images from JWST and other telescopes to identify the earliest galaxies and their supermassive black holes. Does this relationship extend to the very beginning of the Universe?

You might be surprised to learn there's a way to extract enormous energy from a rapidly spinning black hole. Known as the "Penrose Process," an advanced civilization would feed material into a black hole and extract energy as some of it is hurled into space. A new paper suggests that the process could be even more efficient, cycling the material back into the black hole for another round. Or maybe this will turn into an extremely powerful bomb.