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The early universe supercharged black hole growth

Astronomers may have finally cracked one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: how black holes grew so enormous so fast after the Big Bang. New simulations show that early, chaotic galaxies created perfect conditions for small “baby” black holes to go on extreme growth spurts, devouring gas at astonishing rates. These feeding frenzies allowed modest black holes—once thought too puny to matter—to balloon into monsters tens of thousands of times the Sun’s mass.

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