The universe is so vast that astronomers have not seen all of it yet, and much of what we know only applies to places as far as the most powerful telescopes and equipment can detect. Scientists speculate that there is much more out there that man has not seen yet. Scientists are now getting an idea of this vastness as the number of galaxies is much more than what has so far been known.
Astronomers have reevaluated the number of galaxies and estimated that there are about two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, according to Science News. That would put the number to 10 times more than what had been known so far.
The universe's census has been done with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. The team that reevaluated the number of galaxies is led by Christopher Conselice from the University of Nottingham. The number of galaxies has gone up as it factored in smaller galaxies, as Science Daily reports.
Many of the smaller galaxies in time have come together to form the larger galaxies seen today. However, these smaller galaxies are still out there, many of them beyond the range of any known telescope.
Over the years, astronomers have speculated how many galaxies the universe has. The first real study came during the 1990s with the Hubble Deep Field. Following that, the next study was the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which then gave scientists the current estimate of 100 billion galaxies. The research by Conselice and his team show that the current number might actually be too low.
To reach the 2 trillion estimate Conselice and his team analyzed images from Hubble as well as data coming from other teams. The Hubble images were converted to 3D in order to get a better view and measurements of the galaxies. Along with those they also used mathematical calculations to infer galaxies that have not been observed yet. With the data they have, the team concluded that there must be galaxies that are too faint to be seen yet could possibly still be out there.
"It boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied," Conselice admitted. He said that in the future these galaxies could be studied with equipment such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
