According to a new study, there is a possibility that a group of strange giant black holes might be consuming extreme amounts of matter.

As per the researchers, this could aid astronomers to know how the largest black holes were able to grow so quickly in the early universe. According to astronomer, they knew for some time that supermassive black holes can consume enormous quantities of gas and dust that have fallen into their gravitational pull.

When the matter falls toward these black holes, it glows with such brightness that they can be observed billions of light-years away. Astronomers call these very ravenous black holes 'quasars'. The new finding suggests that some quasars are even more adept at devouring material than the researchers earlier knew.

"Even for famously prodigious consumers of material, these huge black holes appear to be dining at enormous rates, at least five to 10 times faster than typical quasars", said Bin Luo of Penn State University in State College.

Data from Chandra for 51 quasars have been studied by the researchers. Those 51 quasars are located at a distance between about 5 billion and 11.5 billion light-years from Earth. According to the researchers, these quasars were chosen as they had strangely weak emission from certain atoms, particularly carbon, at ultraviolet wavelengths.

According to the researchers, it has been found that about 65% of the quasars in the study were much fainter in X-rays, by about 40 times on average, as compared to typical quasars. The researchers said that the weak ultraviolet atomic emission and X-ray fluxes from these objects might be an essential clue to the question that how a supermassive black hole pulls in matter.