Turns Out the First Supermassive Black Holes Weren’t So Supermassive, Research Suggests

A recent study suggests that the first supermassive black holes in the universe were not as massive as previously thought. Astronomers have observed a quasar, a bright celestial object powered by a supermassive black hole, and found that the black hole at its center is much smaller than theoretical models had predicted. The researchers were able to peer past the quasar's blinding light to directly measure the mass of the central black hole. Their findings indicate that this black hole is only about 300 million times the mass of the Sun, much less than the 1 billion solar masses that theoretical models had suggested. This discovery challenges the prevailing theories about the formation and growth of the earliest supermassive black holes in the universe. The researchers suggest that these black holes may have grown more slowly than previously thought, or that their formation process was different from what has been proposed.