The mystery unraveled: black holes defied the laws of physics, expanding to monstrous sizes.

Scientists have found evidence that massive black holes in the early Universe, which existed less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, defied the laws of physics to grow to enormous sizes. This discovery may help solve one of the major mysteries: how did supermassive black holes in the early Universe manage to become so large so quickly? The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, reports Space.

At the center of all large galaxies lie supermassive black holes, whose mass is millions or even billions of times greater than that of the Sun. Researchers believe that these black holes gain mass through the merging of smaller black holes as well as by absorbing surrounding matter. The latter process causes matter to accumulate around black holes in the form of flattened clouds of gas, known as accretion disks. The influence of the black hole causes these disks to glow brightly, leading to the formation of quasars that can outshine all the stars in their home galaxy.

Current theories suggest that black holes could only become supermassive more than 1 billion years after the birth of the Universe. However, enormous black holes creating quasars have been detected between 500 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang. This raises the question: how did these black holes become so massive in a relatively short time?

To solve this mystery, astrophysicists utilized data from the XMM-Newton and Chandra space telescopes to study the oldest quasars discovered in X-ray light. The researchers concluded that supermassive black holes in the early Universe could have rapidly gained enormous mass due to bursts of intense matter absorption. According to the scientists, such rapid mass increase challenges the limits of one of the laws of physics. The excessively fast absorption of matter by black holes violates the physical laws due to an existing rule known as the Eddington limit.

According to this rule, a black hole accumulating matter around it has a maximum luminosity limit. This limit is reached before the pressure of the black hole's light overcomes its gravity and causes matter to be expelled into space. Consequently, the absorption of matter by the black hole halts, and its growth comes to a stop.

The authors of the new study believe that black holes in the early Universe may have violated this physical rule and continued to absorb matter in vast quantities for relatively short periods, despite its conditions. Evidence for this was found by astrophysicists when examining the relationship between the X-ray light of quasars and the speed of powerful matter winds emitted by black holes.

Researchers think that the violation of physical laws by black holes in the early Universe could explain the existence of enormous black holes less than 1 billion years after the birth of the cosmos. Astrophysicists state that the results of their study are unexpected, as a unique mechanism for black hole growth has been discovered.