By Andrew Grant
GENEVA — Monster black holes in the early universe may have taken an unusual route to becoming so massive.
Giant gas clouds in some of the universe’s first galaxies collapsed under their own gravity to form supermassive black holes, theoretical astrophysicist Lucio Mayer of the University of Zurich suggested December 15 at the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. The postulated process offers a major shortcut to supermassive status, as black holes are generally thought to start small and gradually grow by merging with each other and gobbling up matter. The mechanism also doesn’t rely on stars to spawn black holes in the first place.