NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey (WISE) sky-mapping telescope discovered millions of "supermassive" black holes in the universe that supposedly were hidden in the past.

WISE scanned the sky in infrared light from December 2009 to February 2011, according to NBC News. The discoveries were publicly released in March and examiners are still sifting through the amounts of findings, including the collection of black holes that were previously unknown to astronomers and other experts.

According to the news station, WISE found a total of 2.5 million new black holes across the sky; amounting to almost three times as many black holes found in visible light. The black holes were captured swallowing matter falling into them.

"We expected that there should be this large population of hidden quasars in the universe, but WISE can now identify them across the sky," NASA astronomer Daniel Stern said during a news briefing. "We think these quasars are really important for shaping how galaxies look today."

Io9.com reported that WISE also found a cluster of galaxies dubbed "hot DOGS," (hot,dust-obscured galaxies) said to be among the "brightest, hottest and most powerful ever observed in the universe and could represent a missing link in galaxy evolution."

The new cosmic black holes discovered could span out and amass a space length millions to billions of times more massive than the sun, also according to the site.

Photos of the black holes can be seen here.

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