Black hole growth is slowing down in the universe. New research could help explain why.

Black holes are remarkable astronomical objects with gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape them. The most gigantic ones, known as "supermassive" black holes, can weigh millions to billions times the mass of the Sun.

These giants usually live in the centers of galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a supermassive black hole in its heart as well.

So, how do these supermassive black holes become super massive? To answer this question, our team of astrophysicists looked back in time across the universe's 13.8 billion-year History to track how supermassive black holes have grown from the early days to today.

We constructed a model of the overall growth History of supermassive black holes spanning the past 12 billion years.

How do supermassive black holes grow?

Supermassive black holes grow primarily in two ways. They can consume gas from their host galaxies in a process called accretion, and they can also merge with each other when two galaxies collide.

When supermassive black holes consume gas, they almost always emit strong X-rays, a type of high-energy light invisible to the naked eye. You've probably heard of X-rays at the dentist, where they are sometimes used to examine your teeth. The X-rays used by astronomers generally have lower energies than medical X-rays.

So how can any light, even invisible X-rays, escape from black holes? Strictly speaking, the light is not coming from the black holes themselves, but from the gas just outside them. When gas gets pulled toward a black hole, it heats up and shines to produce light, like X-rays. The more gas a supermassive black hole consumes, the more X-rays it will produce.