“High-energy X-rays are more penetrating than low-energy X-rays, so we can see deeper into the gas burying the black holes”, said Dr Daniel Stern, who works on the NuSTAR project at NASA.
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They were detected by the American space agency Nasa’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) orbiting observatory which was launched in 2012.
And, after a recent survey that spotted five previously unknown supermassive black holes in the centers of various galaxies, NASA researchers now think there could be millions of of them dotting the Universe like the holes of an intergalactic colander.
Some of the “biggest and baddest” black holes around are buried under thick blankets of gas and dust.
Hidden monster…an artist’s impression shows a vortex of debris obscuring a supermassive black hole.
The five supermassive black holes discovered by the team were much brighter and more active than previously thought, as they had consumed large amounts of nearby material and emitted significant amounts of high energy X-rays into space.
“For a long time we have known about supermassive black holes that are not obscured by dust and gas, but we suspected that many more were hidden from our view”, said Lead Scientist George Lansbury from Durham University.
These Black orbs produce such an incomprehensible gravitational field, many often let their imaginations run wild as they consider what could be at the end the black hole.
As previously reported in the Inquisitr, the black hole named SDSS J010013.021280225.8 was calculated to weigh about 12 billion times the mass of the Earth’s Sunday.
Astronomers have found evidence for a large population of hidden supermassive black holes in the universe.
Scientists would not have been able to locate and observe these black holes if it were not for NuStar, which was developed in 2012 and is able to detect much higher-energy X-rays than previous satellite observatories. The researchers presented their findings on Monday, July 6, in Llandudno, Wales, at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting.
The team behind the discovery suggests that millions of concealed monster black holes exist in the universe.
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The results of this study-which has been funded by the Science and Technology facilities Council and has since been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
