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from the too-many-for-finger-and-toe-counting dept.
A new estimate has found that the observable universe contains around 2 trillion galaxies, about ten times more than previously thought:
A new study from a team of international astronomers, led by astrophysicists from the University of Nottingham with support from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), has produced some astounding results: The universe contains at least two trillion galaxies, 10 times more than the highest previous estimates. What's more, the new study suggests that 90 percent of all galaxies are hidden from us, and only the remaining 10 percent can be seen at all, even with our most powerful telescopes. The paper detailing the study was published today in the Astrophysical Journal.
"We are missing the vast majority of galaxies because they are very faint and far away," said Nottingham Astrophysics Professor Christopher Conselice in an RAS press release. "The number of galaxies in the universe is a fundamental question in astronomy, and it boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the cosmos have yet to be studied. Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we study these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes?"
[...] Professor Conselice, in partnerships with researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Leiden University in the Netherlands, used Wilkinson's work and data from telescopes around the world, particularly Hubble, to create 3D maps of different parts of the universe. Mathematical analysis of the models using the calculated density of the galaxies and the volume for each mapped region of space allowed the researchers to deduce how many galaxies we are missing in our observations, and in turn, how many there are in total spread across the universe.
Hubble has an absolute magnitude limit of 31 while the James Webb Space Telescope's limit is expected to be 34, so it may spot a lot of these faint galaxies.
Also at Space.com.
The Evolution of Galaxy Number Density at z
(Score: 1) by DeKO on Friday October 14 2016, @05:49PM
Why does virtually every astronomy-related story gets flooded with a horde of new age/electric universe/anti-science dufus ignorami saying "well, look at that, scientists don't know shit because they didn't get it right the first time around, they're probably too stupid to ever get anything right"?
I thought we left those guys behind on the green site.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 14 2016, @05:52PM
"Dark matter" is a specific topic that is hated probably by at least half of the users here (even though this story does not say anything about the missing matter that could replace dark matter, and is about distant matter). The other shit you saw was just trolling and can be ignored.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 14 2016, @09:38PM
Another aspect of this story which the linked source does not do justice to is that the speed of light limits our event horizon far more than inadequate optics. Source. [gizmodo.com]
The observable universe—that is, the part of the universe that’s visible to us on Earth—contains 10 to 20 times as many galaxies than previous estimates.
...
And that’s just within the observable universe. Because the cosmos emerged some 13.8 billion years ago, we’re only able to observe objects up to a certain distance from Earth. Anything outside this “Hubble Bubble” is invisible to us because the light from these distant objects simply haven’t had enough time to reach us. It’s difficult—if not impossible—to know how many galaxies reside outside this cosmological blind spot.
Its not clear from any of the stories published on this issue just what percentage of these 10 or 20 times more galaxies are due to better optics as opposed to the event horizon being pushed out spherically by the speed of light with each passing year. A light year added to the edge of said sphere encompasses an enormous area.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 15 2016, @01:30AM
I thought that was common knowledge *snicker*.
Anyway, I made sure to specify "observable universe" in the summary. And I skimmed through the arxiv paper to confirm these details.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @06:15PM
I thought we left those guys behind on the green site.
For that *VERY* reason you get 'flooded'. You think that you are better than everyone else. Hell it may even be true. But show some humility. Your attitude is why people get pissed off about changes. People like you go on and on about how things are and yell down anyone who says differently. Then when it is shown to be different of course they show up and tell you to fuck off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @08:54PM
Somebody has an inferiority complex.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 14 2016, @06:28PM
> "well, look at that, scientists don't know shit because they didn't get it right the first time around
Well, since scientists insist that religious text are a joke because they say pi is 3 instead of 3 dot an arbitrary number of digits (where dot was not yet used to compute), or because the text says stop to the sun, when the earth is really rotating around the sun, which goes against their own no preferred inertial frame of reference stuff, I'd say they are justified in having them taste their own medicine.
As of now, dark matter is the epicycle for the new millennium. Proof https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/09/30/114238 [soylentnews.org]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday October 14 2016, @06:40PM
Some scientists do that. Just as some other scientist are very religious, some non-scientists are very anti-religious, and some other non-scientists are very religious.
The vast majority of scientists gives no shit about what you think about the religious texts, as long as you don't try to missionize them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday October 15 2016, @08:15AM
I hinted at a reaction, I ignore the percentage of bible rejecting scientists nor I think it is relevant to my point.
The reaction is not justified, and the attack that prompted the reaction, a documented attack no matter how little representative of the scientists' population, was not justified either.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday October 14 2016, @06:42PM
Because free speech means that idiots have a right to speak too. And we have a right to call them idiots.
Incidentally, my favorite answer to the "science doesn't know anything, because they just discovered something new" is The Relativity of Wrong [tufts.edu], by Isaac Asimov.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.