There might be far more supermassive black holes hiding around us than we thought, scientists warn

A disk of hot gas swirls around a black hole in this illustration. The stream of gas stretching to the right is what remains of a star that was pulled apart by the black hole. A cloud of hot plasma (gas atoms with their electrons stripped away) above the black hole is known as a corona. - (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The universe could be home to far more supermassive black holes than we realised, according to new research.

Many of them are hidden beyond our view, the researchers suggest – which might mean that we have dramatically undercounted how many swirling voids are present in our cosmos.