Scientists have just realised the universe has more supermassive black holes than anyone believed

According to scientists, there could be more black holes in the universe than previously thought.

Researchers reckon astronomers could be missing between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of the feeding supermassive black holes, which have masses millions to billions of times the mass of suns.

While the idea of there being more black holes sounds scary, they remain largely hidden behind what helps them to feed such as galactic gas and dust.

"The relative size scales of a supermassive black hole to its host galaxy is like comparing a pea to the Earth," study team leader Peter Boorman, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland earlier this week, as reported by Space.com.

But despite that extreme size difference, an accreting supermassive black hole has the potential to unleash havoc or have a positive influence on its host galaxy," Boorman added.

Supermassive black holeiStockphoto by Getty Images

Why is this the case?

Astrophysical jets are blasted when black holes "overfeed" at approximately 33 per cent the speed of light and consequently, these jets of material push away the gas and dust - two things required to form stars in their home galaxies.

So star formation can be slowed or killed by an erupting black hole in a nearby galaxy.

"This has a dramatic implication for our perception of galaxy evolution," Boorman continued. "There's one component of this picture that is often overlooked: obscuration."

Within astronomy, obscuration is defined by Oxford Languages as "the concealment of one celestial body by the passage of another between it and the observer," and in this case, it's the hiding of feeding or "accreting" supermassive black holes in otherwise bright regions known as active galactic nuclei (AGN) by the gas and dust they feed on.

How do supermassive black holes feed and grow?

Well, there has to be a "cosmic buffet" of material around for black holes like this to feed, that's according to Boorman who outlined what this looks like.

"It's believed that this material can form the approximate geometrical shape of a donut," he explained.

"Depending on the orientation of that material towards our line of sight, we either see down to the centre of the accreting material, which is very bright, or we see heavy obscuration."

Research before this found that 15 per cent of feeding supermassive black holes could be hidden from our view due to this obscuration.

Infrared data from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft, as part of a project called NuLANDS (NuSTAR Local AGN N H Distribution Survey) was then used by the researchers to test this idea.

It resulted in imagery of infrared light coming from clouds surrounding supermassive black holes which meant the team could establish a census of black holes growing by consuming the matter around them.

"Though black holes are dark, surrounding gas heats up and glows intensely, making them some of the brightest objects in the universe," team member and Southhampton University researcher Poshak Gandhi said in a statement. "Even when hidden, the surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits this light as infrared radiation, revealing their [black hole's] presence.

"We’ve found that many more are lurking in plain sight — hiding behind dust and gas, rendering them invisible to normal telescopes."

Discovering these hidden black holes could provide further insight as to how exactly they grow so large and overall provide some answers to the evolution of galaxies.

"If we didn’t have black holes, galaxies could be much larger," Gandhi said. "If we didn’t have a supermassive black hole in our Milky Way galaxy, there might be many more stars in the sky.

"That’s just one example of how black holes can influence a galaxy’s evolution."

What would it look like if we could see these hidden black holes?

Our perception of the universe would be a lot different if we could see these feeding supermassive black holes ourselves.

"If our eyes were able to detect X-rays, the sky would be full of dots," Boorman said. "And every single one of those dots would be an accreting supermassive black hole."

Elsewhere, a massive black hole 'taking a nap' after overeating becomes the most relatable scientific discovery ever.

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.