Did you know that some black holes in the early universe grew faster than physics should allow?

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found a quasar called RACS J0320-35, powered by a black hole about a billion times the mass of the Sun. It’s so far away that we see it as it was just 920 million years after the Big Bang.

Normally, black holes can’t grow beyond what’s called the Eddington limit. At that point, the pressure of radiation pushes matter away, stopping it from falling in. But this black hole is breaking the rules — it’s growing at 2.4 times the Eddington limit.

That kind of runaway growth may explain how the first monster black holes appeared so quickly in the early universe. Even more surprising, this quasar shoots out powerful jets of particles — something rare for quasars, and possibly linked to its extreme growth.

This discovery could help scientists answer one of the biggest questions in astrophysics:
How did the first supermassive black holes form?