The black hole's voracious appetite, which has allowed it to pile on more than seven million solar masses in just 12 million years, exceeds the theoretical maximum growth rate and goes some way to explaining how black holes could grow so massive so quickly in the early universe.

Understanding how these black holes managed to grow so rapidly in the early universe has posed significant challenges.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Chandra X-ray Observatory helped identify the “fastest-feeding black hole” - LID-568.

Using data from NASA’s JWST and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of U.S. National Science Foundation NOIRLab astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang that is consuming matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit.