Galaxy count has just spiked

There may be a whole lot more massive communities of stars out there for future telescopes to explore. That’s the conclusion of a new survey of the universe. It estimates there may have been as many as two trillion galaxies. This new count is roughly 10 times the earlier estimate.

Christopher Conselice and his team posted their new estimate online October 10 at arXiv.org.

Conselice works at the University of Nottingham in England. As an astrophysicist, he studies the physical nature of stars and other objects in space. Galaxies are enormous collections of stars, each potentially containing trillions of stars and more. To perform its new galaxy count, Conselice’s group worked with images from a series of telescopes. These included the Hubble Space Telescope.

The team used a computer to turn the images into three-dimensional models of the universe. Each would model a different time in the history of the cosmos. The goal was to tally the likely number of galaxies at those different points in time to calculate how the galaxy count might had changed.

The team also did mathematical work. That allowed them to account for extremely faint galaxies — ones too faint for any existing telescope to pick up.

The final count proved far higher than the earlier estimate of some 200 billion galaxies. Many tiny galaxies appear behind the newfound increase. These mini galaxies might weigh as little as 1 million suns. Keep in mind, astronomers have not yet laid eyes on  such runts. They are simply too far away for even the best telescopes to spot.

But one day they might. Light from even the earliest and most distant stars and galaxies continues to zoom around the universe. The runt galaxies in question probably existed in the early universe. Back then, it is likely that there were far more galaxies than exist today. Conselice’s team drew that conclusion from its results.

Its analyses suggest that the number of galaxies has fallen with time. Most of the 2 trillion that likely existed at some point collided and merged. The result were gargantuan mega-galaxies. Such biggies include the Milky Way. Galactic mergers are, in fact, in line with prevailing ideas about how massive galaxies come to be.

To confirm the new count, astronomers will need more powerful eyes to scan the skies. If those telescopes are sensitive enough, they might one day pick up light from the distant, early universe. Their powerful optics might confirm the existence of numerous early, runt galaxies. But that will take some time, the researchers point out: “We will have to wait at least several decades before even the majority of galaxies [show up].”

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