Black holes have captured the public imagination for decades – a staple of classic space opera and pulp science fiction as a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.

A point of no return, a literal void in the universe if you will. What is perhaps less well known is that these terrifying cosmic devourers are based on over a hundred years of scientific and mathematical theory and most strikingly – they almost certainly actually exist in our universe and are much, much stranger than they first appear to be.