Hubble’s latest breakthrough reveals trillions of unknown galaxies in the Universe
How many galaxies are there in the observable Universe? For the first time, we don’t just have a ‘lower limit’ — we have an answer.
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” -Carl Sagan
How many galaxies are there in the observable Universe? Ever since we first uncovered the Big Bang origins of our cosmos, we knew that the number would be finite, since a signal from a galaxy moving even at the speed of light can only reach a certain distance. But without a telescope capable of reaching all the way back to the Big Bang itself, any number we reached from observations would only be a lower limit, not an accurate estimate. Previously, that’s exactly what astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope had done, revealing a Universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies, at least. But thanks to a new study by the CANDELS team, that estimate has been increased to two trillion, an increase of more…
