Some Black Holes Grew Huge Within a Billion Years

Astronomers have found supermassive black holes that already weighed hundreds of millions of Suns less than a billion years after the Big Bang—one, in the quasar J1342+0928, shone just 690 million years after it. How did they grow so fast? One theory is that some black holes started as direct collapses of massive gas clouds, skipping the usual slow buildup. These ancient monsters challenge our understanding of how black holes—and the universe itself—evolved.