A new study on supermassive black holes has discovered something that could totally change our understanding about how they are born.

These black holes are found at the center of galaxies, including our own Milky Way, and the study finds that rather than slowly building up in size over billions of years, these black holes were probably born big in the first place — and born quickly, according to an ESA/Hubble Information Centre statement.

Astronomers in Italy have found evidence that these giant black holes millions of times larger than our sun were probably born of a special type of black hole “seed,” which formed from the collapse of giant gas clouds. That means these black holes didn’t start as a collapsed star, and then gradually sucked up material to grow larger and larger, but rather they were born as giants.

There’s still a lot scientists don’t know about how these black holes form, but there are lots of theories out there. One possibility is that several black holes merged into one in a short period of time, another is that supermassive black holes have more material to swallow up early on, and yet another is that these black holes former just a billion years after the big bang as the previous two doesn’t explain how they became as large as they are today.