After studying one of the ancient galaxies, scientists have surmised that there may be a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy GS-9209, which is 25 million light-years away.
According to the research published in the journal Nature, scientists used the data collected from the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and observed the galaxy with great detail.
They concluded that there was no star formation for half a billion years, meaning a supermassive black hole may be behind the killing of a new star build-up.
The mass of the stars in GS-9209 is approximately 40 billion times that of the sun, researchers estimated.
According to the scientists, the galaxy was about 600 to 800 million years old.
When the supermassive black holes grow, they release massive amounts of radiation which can increase the temperature and push the gases out of the galaxies.
A team of researchers led by the University of Edinburgh said that the black hole could have prevented star formation in GS-9209, as stars are made when clouds of dust and gas particles inside galaxies collapse under their own weight.
The galaxy GS-9209 has not a large number of stars in the milky way, which is 10 times smaller than ours.
Lead researcher Dr Adam Carnall, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy, said: "This work gives us our first really detailed look at the properties of these early galaxies, charting in detail the history of GS-9209, which managed to form as many stars as our own Milky Way in just 800 million years after the Big Bang."
"The fact that we also see a very massive black hole in this galaxy was a big surprise, and lends a lot of weight to the idea that these black holes are what shut down star formation in early galaxies.”
"The James Webb Space Telescope has already demonstrated that galaxies were growing larger and earlier than we ever suspected during the first billion years of cosmic history."