Astronomers have found a black hole in the early universe that consumes 3,000 suns per year.

In the depths of the distant universe, astronomers have discovered a black hole that violates generally accepted rules. The distant quasar RACS J0320-35 is growing at a rate 2.4 times higher than the Eddington limit, which challenges modern ideas about the growth of black holes at the dawn of space.

The object called RACS J0320-35 is so far away that its light took 12.8 billion years to reach us. This means that we see it as it was just 920 million years after the Big Bang.

Even at that early epoch, the mass of this black hole was already about a billion times the mass of the Sun, and its X-ray emission was brighter than that of any other black hole found in the first billion years of the universe's existence.

Taken together, these facts add up to an amazing picture. A black hole seems to be absorbing matter much faster than the theoretical limit allows. "It was a bit shocking to see this black hole growing by leaps and bounds," said Luca Igina, author of the RACS J0320-35 study.

Detection of a giant cosmic anomaly

The study began with the bright remote object RACS J0320-35, first spotted during a large-scale radio survey using the Australian ASKAP radio telescope complex (Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder).

Subsequent observations using telescopes in Chile, including the Dark Energy Camera and the Gemini Southern Telescope, confirmed the distance to the object and showed it to be a quasar galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole that absorbs gas and shines so brightly that it outshines other galaxies.

However, it was only after observations in the X—ray range using NASA's Chandra Space X-ray Observatory in 2023 that astronomers realized what made this quasar special. When matter falls into a black hole, it heats up and emits light, including powerful X-rays.

Usually, this process is limited by the so-called Eddington limit (the theoretical balance at which the radiation pressure from the incident substance prevents the new material from falling).

This is a kind of natural limiter of the rate at which a black hole can grow. Surprisingly, the data showed that RACS J0320-35 overcomes this cosmic speed barrier.

It turned out that the black hole is growing at a rate approximately 2.4 times higher than the Eddington limit. This means that it consumes the equivalent mass of 300 to 3,000 of our suns every year.

This is the highest velocity ever recorded for a black hole in the first billion years of the universe's existence.

What does such a rapid growth of a black hole mean?

Until now, astronomers believed that the only way for early black holes to reach a billion solar masses was to be born already huge — about 10,000 solar masses — as a result of the direct collapse of giant clouds of primary gas.

However, if RACS J0320-35 was indeed fueled at such an extreme rate for a long time, it could have started its growth while being much smaller — with a mass of less than 100 suns, similar to black holes formed after the death of massive stars.

This opens up a new avenue for explaining how these space giants came to be.

"Knowing the mass of a black hole and figuring out how fast it is growing, we can perform calculations in reverse order to estimate how massive it could have been at birth. With this calculation, we can now test various hypotheses about how black holes are born," said Alberto Moretti, one of the study's authors and a researcher at the INAF-Brera Observatory in Italy.

In addition, this quasar also produces jets (jets of particles moving at speeds close to the speed of light), a rare feature among quasars. The researchers suspect that its unusually rapid growth may be related to the formation of these jets.

Thus, this discovery is not just a record. It challenges established theories about the birth and growth of black holes and may change our understanding of the evolution of the early universe.

If black holes can grow so fast, scientists may not have to resort to exotic and rare conditions to explain the existence of black holes with a mass of a billion suns so soon after the Big Bang.

Instead, ordinary black holes formed from collapsing stars could have a chance to gain mass quickly under the right conditions.

However, the big question remains: has RACS J0320-35 really sustained such extreme growth for hundreds of millions of years, or is it just a short-term burst of activity? And how exactly are its powerful jets related to this rapid growth?

To find answers, astronomers plan to search for and study other rule-breaking quasars using the Chandra Telescope and future observatories.