The colossal black holes at the centres of galaxies probably formed shortly after the Big Bang, a study suggests.
Some of these behemoths are billions of times more massive than our Sun.
Supercomputer simulations indicate the conditions for the birth and growth of these giants could have been set in play by the merger of galaxies when the cosmos was just a few hundred million years old.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11087715
Note: 25 August 2010 Last updated at 18:20 GMT