How do you feed a hungry quasar?

The universe’s oldest, brightest beacons may have gorged themselves in the dense, cold, gas flows of the early cosmos — creating a kind of energy drink for infant black holes in the young universe — according to new research by Yale faculty member Priyamvada Natarajan and Tal Alexander of the Weizmann Institute in Israel.  Their analysis shows that early quasars took in a “super boost,” feasting from large reservoirs of gas that were part of early star clusters.