Could this be where the dead go? Astronomers have uncovered five new massive black holes

The universe could be riddled with millions more black holes than previously believed, worrying new research has found.

Five "supermassive" black holes that were previously obscured by dust and gas have been uncovered by British astronomers.

The find suggests there may be millions more of them scattered about the cosmos than previously thought.

Supermassive black holes are powerful cosmic "plug holes" which suck anything in their path into a point of infinite density, formed from the compressed mass of hundreds of thousands, to billions of suns.

High energy X-rays given off around the new black holes at the centre of five galaxies gave them away.

With the possibility of millions more black holes than ever imagined, the fear is one could come within a billion miles of our solar system.

Its gravity could change the Earth's orbit around the Sun, leaving us with summers of hundreds of degrees Celsius and far too sub-zero winters to comprehend, risking all life on the planet.

The new five were detected by Nasa's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) orbiting observatory, which was designed to pick up extremely high energy X-rays from distant objects such as these.

George Lansbury, lead scientist from the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at the University of Durham, said: "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.

"Thanks to NuSTAR for the first time we have been able to clearly see these hidden monsters that are predicted to be there, but have previously been elusive because of their 'buried' state.

"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."

Dr Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at the American space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, US, said: "High-energy X-rays are more penetrating than low-energy X-rays, so we can see deeper into the gas burying the black holes.

"NuSTAR allows us to see how big the hidden monsters are and is helping us learn why only some black holes appear obscured."

The scientists presented their findings at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting, in Llandudno, Wales.

The research, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.