New Theory Points to the Universe's Greatest Fireworks Show

An artist's conception of a supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk and emitting a relativistic jet (Credit : ESO)

What if the universe began with a fireworks show? A new theory suggests that supermassive black holes, the mysterious giants found at the heart of galaxies, were born from the universe's very first stars in a spectacular flash of light that ionised all of space before vanishing forever. This dramatic "Pop III.1" model could finally explain how these giant stellar remnants grew so impossibly large so quickly after the Big Bang, while potentially solving several major puzzles plaguing modern astronomy, from the Hubble Tension to the nature of Cosmic Dawn itself.

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