New research suggests the universe is hiding massive black holes by covering them in mysterious sheets of dust and gas.
According to CBS News, the astronomers who made their observations with NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite published their work in the Astrophysical Journal.
"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," study lead author George Lansbury, of Durham University, said in a press release. "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."
On Monday, the astronomers discussed their study at the Royal Astronomical Society's annual meetings in Llandudno, Wales.
"High-energy X-rays are more penetrating than low-energy X-rays, so we can see deeper into the gas burying the black holes," Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in the release. "NuSTAR allows us to see how big the hidden monsters are, and is helping us learn why only some black holes appear obscured."
