Ginormous Black Holes Hidden In Dense Clouds: NASA

The spotting of five new supermassive black holes recently has revealed their number could be bigger than previously thought.

Astronomers in United Kingdom used NuSTAR, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array, to identify monster black holes enshrouded in thick clouds of gas and dust. These clouds prevent telescopes from seeing the black holes within, but NuSTAR found them by detecting high-energy X-rays which penetrates the clouds.

According to a NASA press release, researchers at Durham University pointed NuSTAR at nine galaxies where existence of super-massive black holes were suspected but could not be confirmed due to dense clouds. Five of these nine galaxies revealed they concealed such black holes. Researchers then extrapolated that millions of such black holes are littered across the universe.

"Thanks to NuSTAR, for the first time, we have been able to clearly identify these hidden monsters that are predicted to be there, but have previously been elusive because of their surrounding cocoons of material," said George Lansbury the lead author of the findings accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

"Although we have only detected five of these hidden supermassive black holes, when we extrapolate our results across the whole universe, then the predicted numbers are huge and in agreement with what we would expect to see," he said.