With observations from the PACS instrument on board the ESA Herschel space observatory, an international team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have found gigantic storms of molecular gas gusting in the centers of many galaxies. Some of these massive outflows reach velocities of more than 1000 kilometres per second. The observations show that the more active galaxies contain stronger winds, which can blow away the entire gas reservoir in a galaxy, thereby inhibiting both further star formation and the growth of the central black hole. This finding confirms accepted theories of galaxy evolution and is the first conclusive evidence for the importance of galactic winds in this episode of the history of elliptical galaxies.