Supermassive black holes shortly after the Big Bang: How to seed them

(Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati) They are billions of times larger than our Sun: how is it possible that supermassive black holes were already present when the Universe was 'just' 800 million years old? For astrophysicists, the formation of these cosmic monsters in such a short time is a real scientific headache. A new study proposes a very fast formation process in the initial phases of their development, proving, mathematically, that their existence was possible in the young...