Here's why:
* Stellar-Mass Black Holes: These form when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives. We've observed thousands of these throughout the Milky Way galaxy alone.
* Supermassive Black Holes: These behemoths reside at the centers of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. They are millions to billions of times more massive than our Sun.
* Intermediate-Mass Black Holes: These are a less understood category, but they are thought to be in the middle ground between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes.
We are constantly discovering new black holes through various methods, such as observing gravitational waves, studying X-ray emissions, and tracking the motion of stars around invisible objects.
So, the universe is filled with these fascinating and mysterious objects, and the number of black holes is likely much larger than we currently know.