The discovery of supermassive black holes in the centre of early galaxies poses fresh questions about how they got so large, so quickly (Illustration A.Hobart/CXC/NASA)
HOW did black holes lurking at the centre of galaxies like ours get so big so quickly? That’s the puzzle posed by the discovery of fully grown, supermassive black holes surrounded by fledgling galaxies early in the history of the universe.
Chris Carilli of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, and colleagues studied four galaxies from less than 2 billion years after the big bang. They found the black holes at the…
