The giant black hole in the most distant-known quasar, which formed just 750 million years after the Big Bang, engulfed matter at the same rate as much younger quasars.

Alberto Moretti of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan, Italy, and his colleagues used the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory to study ULAS J1120+0641, a galactic centre that produces huge amounts of radiation powered by a supermassive black hole. They found that its X-ray spectrum, an indication of the rate at which the black hole sucks in matter, was indistinguishable from those of quasars seen later in the life of the Universe. The authors had expected that ULAS J1120+0641 would collect matter at a much higher rate because its mass is 2 billion times that of the Sun. The slow growth rate of the galactic centre raises questions about how it could have reached its huge size so early in the Universe's life.

Astron. Astrophys. 563, A46 (2014)