Astronomers have found the most extreme example yet of a black hole outweighing its own galaxy, and it may be hiding clues to how the supermassive black holes seen today formed in the early universe.
In a new study, astronomers directly measured the mass of a black hole sitting in a "little red dot" seen when the universe was just 700 million years old. The results suggest that the black hole is much too massive for its host galaxy — meaning it may have formed before the galaxy itself had a chance to develop.
