Astronomers Find 90% More Universe!

Universe Today

Quote from source:
Astronomers have long known that many surveys of distant galaxies miss 90% of their targets, but they didn't know why. Now, astronomers have determined that a large fraction of galaxies whose light took 10 billion years to reach us have gone undiscovered. This was found with an extremely deep survey using two of the four giant 8.2-meter telescopes that make up ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and a unique custom-built filter. The survey also helped uncover some of the faintest galaxies ever found at this early stage of the Universe.

Astronomers frequently use the strong, characteristic “fingerprint” of light emitted by hydrogen known as the Lyman-alpha line, to probe the amount of stars formed in the very distant Universe Yet there have long been suspicions that many distant galaxies go unnoticed in these surveys. A new VLT survey demonstrates for the first time that this is exactly what is happening. Most of the Lyman-alpha light is trapped within the galaxy that emits it, and 90% of galaxies do not show up in Lyman-alpha surveys.

“Astronomers always knew they were missing some fraction of the galaxies in Lyman-alpha surveys,” explains Matthew Hayes, the lead author of the paper, published this week in Nature, “but for the first time we now have a measurement. The number of missed galaxies is substantial.”

To figure out how much of the total luminosity was missed, Hayes and his team used the FORS camera at the VLT and a custom-built narrowband filter to measure this Lyman-alpha light, following the methodology of standard Lyman-alpha surveys. Then, using the new HAWK-I camera, attached to another VLT Unit Telescope, they surveyed the same area of space for light emitted at a different wavelength, also by glowing hydrogen, and known as the H-alpha line. They specifically looked at galaxies whose light has been traveling for 10 billion years (redshift 2.2), in a well-studied area of the sky, known as the GOODS-South field.

I thought the title of this article was great! I kept laughing every time I read it.

Awesome to see there is so much more out there to discover than we even thought in the first place. I seems like no matter where they look they can find a plethora of other galaxies.

I love space exploration, but now we got to figurer out how to get people out there, or at least robots.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

The number of galaxies that they've missed is "substantial"
Are they serious? What a great discovery, nice find, Op.

As if the universe wasn't already way too big to comprehend, now it's even 90% bigger than that ?

Well damn! They can't leave us hanging like that. I used to be able to say that there were about 700 billion stars / galaxy out of about 100 billion galaxies. What does this do to my stats?! Do I just multiply by 1.9?!

[edit on 24-3-2010 by Xtraeme]

Amazing. As if our universe wasn't big enough. Everything we've read/watched has been telling us that we're "unable to comprehend" the size of our "current model" of the universe. Hmph..! Apparently our ability to "comprehend" has just gotten a whole lot worse!

Great find OP! S&F for bringing new & exciting information to the table. I'll be checking back.


Cheers,
Strype

[edit on 25-3-2010 by Strype]

Great news indeed! The universe is 90% more infinite than it was previously thought to be.

if they have missed 90% of the galaxies in the universe IE 905 of the mass, doesnt that mean, dark matter doesnt exist?
reason i say that is, dark matter was 'thought up' when it was calculated they universe was missing 90% of the mass they thought was needed to prove th big bang theory.
now, if they insist on dark matter still being 90% of the universe, and now think they have discovered 90% more mass, the universe is either too heavy, or someone cant count right?
on another note, nice post op, good stuff

S&F

I just wanted to post this. I think this is the most important news in years.

babylonstew

posted on 25-3-2010 at 17:30
if they have missed 90% of the galaxies in the universe IE 905 of the mass, doesnt that mean, dark matter doesnt exist?
reason i say that is, dark matter was 'thought up' when it was calculated they universe was missing 90% of the mass they thought was needed to prove th big bang theory.
now, if they insist on dark matter still being 90% of the universe, and now think they have discovered 90% more mass, the universe is either too heavy, or someone cant count right?
on another

Babylonstew already said it. Star for him



There is alot of research going on right now relating to dark matter which would all be useles.
There are only gravity anomalies which makes us see galaxies double ( or more) and they blamed dark matter for it. So without dark matter ???

Maybe it's because of super black holes that have already devoured their entire galaxy ?

Yeah if this is true dark matter is not needed. A lot of scientists think there's no need for dark matter -- but all the proposed "particles" for dark matter would have to be given up. What it would do for supersymmetry, for example, might be interesting - axions, wimps, squarks maybe? Not sure.

Anyway so there was way more matter formed in the early universe than previously assumed -- and this should also affect models for the evolution of the universe -- maybe the theory of inflation.

Originally posted by drew hempel

Anyway so there was way more matter formed in the early universe than previously assumed -- and this should also affect models for the evolution of the universe -- maybe the theory of inflation.

Inflation ? Please tell me what you are thinking of relating to it ?

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


The distribution of matter in the universe is reversed based on the expansion of spacetime -- so the cosmic background shows some clumping of matter which later became galaxies. That's what -- 200,000 years after inflation?

But then inflation is quantum -- so time doesn't really exist during inflation -- it's reversible and instantaneous -- and so the universe may just be a holograph as is currently considered the proper unified field theory.

I originally wanted to comment on the implications that this had in relation to dark matter but someone else beat me to it. Anyway, this is definitely an awesome find and could help the standard model immensely.

Side note: I was sort of let down when I found out what VLT means. I assumed it was something technical like "Virtual Light Transmagnifier." But no, it stands for the extremely technical term "Very Large Telescope." And they say scientists are imaginative...

reply to post by drew hempel


Thanks @

I think a holographic universe to be the most reasonable theory I've heard of with my current understanding of everything.

Hi,

I can't decide if i should be relieved that they 'found' the EDIT 95+%( not 90%) of mass they needed to make SR 'work' or that they managed to 'lose' it in the first place or stuck with a 'theory' so long when it's basic tenants were not ? Fascinating how hard us regular folk need to fight for our credibility while all this goes on. Either way i do not have much faith in this 'finding' considering it's implication as means to yet again aid the fudge factors so far used to patch up inconsistencies in our standard cosmological models.

Depressing.

Regards,

Stellar

(96 changed to 95%)

[edit on 2-4-2010 by StellarX]

Yet we still can barely see a moon orbiting around our own planet