Chandra Resolves Why Black Holes Hit the Brakes on Growth Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as they did in the distant past Ten billion years ago, there was a period that
Chandra resolves why black holes hit the brakes on growth Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA's Chandra X-ray
Chandra Explains Why Black Hole Growth Slowed Since Cosmic . . . This quantity depends on three factors: accretion rates, black hole masses, and the number of actively growing black holes Repeating this measurement at different cosmic times allows us to reconstruct the total growth history of the SMBH population
Chandra resolves why black holes hit the brakes on growth Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as they did in the distant past The results appeared in the December 2025 issue of The
Why black holes hit the brakes on growthWhy black holes hit . . . Meanwhile, Chandra contributed the top tier with deep observations covering a relatively small area that allowed the detection of fainter and more distant growing black holes The team ran tests of the three main possible scenarios currently being considered for the slowdown of black hole growth