Massive Black Hole Eats Matter 40 Times Faster Than Known Limits

Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have made a groundbreaking discovery: they’ve identified a relatively small but rapidly growing supermassive black hole in the early universe, consuming matter at an astonishing rate.

This black hole, found within the distant galaxy LID-568—formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang—surpasses the theoretical maximum rate of matter absorption, known as the Eddington limit, by an unprecedented 40 times.

The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, shed new light on how supermassive black holes may have reached impressive sizes in a relatively short span of cosmic history.

The black hole’s accretion disk—the swirling disk of matter being pulled in—glows intensely as friction and gravitational forces heat it.

But there’s a catch: at high brightness levels, the outward pressure from emitted light can counteract the black hole’s inward gravitational pull, creating a balance known as the Eddington limit.

This threshold essentially caps the rate at which a black hole can “feed,” since the light pressure can push matter away from the black hole.

This black hole, however, defies that limit. Analysis shows it has a mass 7.2 million times that of our Sun and radiates far more light than expected for its size.

Calculations reveal that its consumption rate is about 40 times beyond what’s allowed by the Eddington limit. Scientists have theorized that black holes might temporarily exceed this limit under certain conditions, but this is the first observation of such extreme feeding behavior.

The discovery could help resolve a longstanding cosmic puzzle: how black holes in the early universe managed to become so massive so quickly.

Conventionally, black holes are believed to require billions of years to grow to supermassive sizes, yet astronomers have already observed these cosmic giants relatively soon after the Big Bang.

The researchers suggest that periods of excessive feeding, far beyond the Eddington limit, might explain how early black holes accumulated mass at such an accelerated pace, allowing them to achieve supermassive status much faster than previously thought.