This infographic explains a popular theory of active supermassive black holes, referred to as the unified model -- and how new data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is at conflict with the model. Astronomers say the model could still be correct but needs adjusting to account for the unexpected observations by WISE.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise.