Boffins from Nasa found several black hole pairs dotted throughout the universe at once – previously there have only been 10 black hole couples detected.
The experts state the couples form when two galaxies collide. At the centre of galaxies, including the Milky Way, there typically resides a supermassive blackhole.
When two galaxies crash into each other, as will happen with the Milky Way and the nearest galaxy Andromeda in billions of years, the black holes can either merge or they become couples.
Each of the black holes in couples have a mass millions of times that of the sun.
The five newly discovered couples were found by data from an array of telescopes, including Nasa’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wide-Field Infrared Sky Explorer Survey (WISE) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
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Shobita Satyapal, lead author of the research paper, said: “Astronomers find single supermassive black holes all over the universe.
“But even though we’ve predicted they grow rapidly when they are interacting, growing dual supermassive black holes have been difficult to find.”
The researchers found the couples by locating closely-separated pairs of X-ray sources coming from black hole systems – black holes cannot be directly observed because no light can escape from their gravitational pull, they are only detected by the way matter acts around them.
The findings could also help scientists understand the newly discovered gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime.
Dr Satyapal said: “It is important to understand how common supermassive black hole pairs are, to help in predicting the signals for gravitational wave observatories.
“With experiments already in place and future ones coming online, this is an exciting time to be researching merging black holes.
“We are in the early stages of a new era in exploring the universe.”