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Agence France-Presse

There are a dizzying two trillion galaxies in the Universe, up to twenty times more than previously thought, astronomers reported Thursday.
The surprising find, based on 3D modelling of images collected over 20 years by the Hubble Space Telescope, was published in the Astronomical Journal.
Scientists have puzzled over how many galaxies the cosmos harbours at least since US astronomer Edwin Hubble showed in 1924 that Andromeda, a neighbouring galaxy, was not part of our own Milky Way.
But even in the era of modern astronomy, getting an accurate tally has proven difficult.
To begin with, there is only part of the cosmos where light given off by distant objects has had time to reach Earth.
The rest is effectively beyond our reach.

And even within this “observable Universe,” current technology only allows us to glimpse 10 per cent of what is out there, according to the new findings.
“It boggles the mind that over 90 per cent of the galaxies in the Universe have yet to be studied,” commented Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham, who led the study.
“Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we observe these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes,” he said in a statement.
Using deep space images from Hubble, Conselice and his team painstakingly converted them into 3D to measure the number of galaxies at different times in the history of the Universe.

The analysis reached back more than 13 billion years -- very near the time of the “Big Bang” thought to have given birth to the Universe.
A galaxy is a system of millions or billions or stars, held together by gravity, with planetary systems within them.
Using new mathematical models, the astronomers were able to infer the number of “invisible” galaxies beyond the reach of telescopes, leading to the surprising realisation that the vast majority are too faint and far away to be seen.
When the Universe was only a few billion years old, there were ten times as many galaxies in a given volume of space than there are today, the findings suggest.
This in turn suggests that “significant evolution must have occurred to reduce their number through extensive merging of systems.”


How many galaxies out there? Try Two Trillion

An aerial view shows the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in the remote Pingtang county in southwest China's Guizhou province, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016. The world's largest radio telescope began searching for signals from stars and galaxies and, perhaps, extraterrestrial life Sunday in a project demonstrating China's rising ambitions in space and its pursuit of international scientific prestige. (Chinatopix via AP)

epa05583841 An undated handout image released by the NASA on 13 October 2016 shows an image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and covers a portion of the southern field of Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). Among other data, scientists used the galaxies visible in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) to recalculate the total number of galaxies in the observable Universe. This is a large galaxy census, a deep-sky study by several observatories to trace the formation and evolution of galaxies. EPA/NASA/ESA/Hubble / HANDOUT HANDOUT NO ARCHIVES

This handout picture released on September 14, 2016 by the European Space Agency shows an all-sky view of stars in the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies. Photo: AFP

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.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}New | How many galaxies out there? Try Two Trillion

New | How many galaxies out there? Try Two Trillion