Astronomy

from: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1676/hoard-supermassive-black-holes-found

PARIS: A haul of hundreds of expanding supermassive black holes have been found buried deep inside numerous galaxies on the edges of the universe.

The astounding discovery is the first direct evidence that most huge galaxies in the far reaches of the universe generated cavernous black holes during their youth, around 10.5 billion years ago.

Scientists generally agree that the universe as we perceive it came into being about 14 billion years ago.

"Tip of the iceberg"

The findings – reported in the November edition of the Astrophysical Journal – more than double the total number of black holes known to exist at that distance, and suggests that there were hundreds of millions more growing in the early universe.

"We had seen the tip of the iceberg before in our search for these objects. Now, we can see the iceberg itself," said Mark Dickinson of the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona