Universal Light

A new, Very Large Telescope (VLT) has been used to survey distant galaxies with surprising results. “Astronomers always knew they were missing some fraction of the galaxies,” explains Matthew Hayes, the lead author of the research team’s findings, “but for the first time we now have a measurement. The number of missed galaxies is substantial.” The math reveals that the universe is 90% larger than originally thought.

Traditionally, faint “fingerprints” of light emitted by hydrogen known as the Lyman-alpha line have been used to probe galaxies in the distant universe. This light, though, becomes trapped within the galaxy emitting it, since most of these photons are destroyed as they interact with interstellar gas and dust clouds. These surveys using Lyman-alpha were therefore only able to see a fraction of the light being produced. With new methods and state-of-the-art cameras alongside the VLT, astronomers incorporated into the survey of these galaxies an additional light traveling at a different wavelength (also emitted by hydrogen) known as the H-alpha line. At a different wavelength, H-alpha light is seemingly unaffected by the Interstellar Medium in comparison with the Lyman-alpha light, uncovering of some of the faintest galaxies formed in the early life of the Universe. Team member Goran Ostlin commented, “This is the first time we have observed a patch of the sky so deeply in light coming from hydrogen at these two very specific wavelengths, and this proved crucial.”

The results of these new surveys have made it clear to cosmologists, who’ve increasingly depended on the Lyman-alpha light to examine the early history of the Universe, just how substantial the number of missed galaxies was in the past. Co-author Miguel Mas-Hesse says, “Now that we know how much light we’ve been missing, we can start to create far more accurate representations of the cosmos, understanding better how quickly stars have formed at different times in the life of the Universe.”

Image, "Visitors from Outer Space?" by paalia on Flickr Courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing.

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Comments

!!!!!

Submitted by cdcaleo on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 20:12.

In other words, they barely know jackshit about anything.

Took the Words Right Out of my Mouth

Submitted by sniffcode.com on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 20:01.

I was going to say essentially the same thing as you. My version was going to be long-winded and tedious. I'm glad you beat me to the punch -- you said it much better.

www.sniffcode.com

Really?

Submitted by LionKimbro on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 14:28.

That's like losing your scissors at home, and then I come over and say "You barely know jackshit about anything about your house."

Actually, the original paper

Submitted by seachanged on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 20:57.

Actually, the original paper says that 90% of star-forming galaxies are too faint in the Lyman alpha hydrogen emission to be detected (at the redshift/distance that they were looking at).

What this really means is that the universe is likely ten times larger, not 90% larger, in terms of number of galaxies, than we thought. The article from which this RS article was written got it wrong.

Hm, ...

Submitted by LionKimbro on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 06:03.

As for the size of the universe, nobody really knows. It is likely larger than the observable universe, but it's also possibly smaller. It is not known, and the article doesn't really touch on it. It is entirely within scientific understanding to think that the universe extends infinitely in all directions, and always has.

Rather, the article is talking about galaxy counts in the distant past. Remember, it took some 10+ billion years for the light to get to us, so we're really talking about accounting for masses in the very early stages of the universe. We are NOT finding 10x more galaxies in the present that are just somehow invisible.

My two cents.

Submitted by BardoBob on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 18:27.

My feelings on this on quite simple, and profound from a common standpoint. Let's entertain the possibilty that science will continue to overlook because it deals with things outside of a spiritual perspective; that WE are co-creators in this universe. You know that old saying "If you can imagine it, it must be real....somewhere", the first time I heard this it was grossly neglected and placed into the "someone is just trying to comfort me, like, if I can't manifest this then something, somewhere, somehow must have or will at some point". My understanding, albeit coming from the TMK "heroic dosage" club is that our immediate existence is playing a central role in the creation of everything in this locality. A mundane example; stop reading this comment right now and look around, unless you are in the middle of the woods on your phone chances are you're surrounded by "stuff", objects, things, creations of mankind. Where did they come from, how did they come to be? They are the physical manifestation of a non-physical origin; thought. This is a power we instill in our concept of God, but not an ability reserved for ourselves necessarily speaking. We limit ourselves, rather we limit our self-perceived capabilities, eventhough time and time again we are staring the opposite right in the face all day long. Human-kind is and has created objects that were the stuff of dreams long, long ago, and in some instances not so long ago. Remember lightning; that scary stuff that God rained down on us when he was angry? Yeah, we bottled that up and now the entire world runs on it, electricity I think they call it. I'll get to the point, I don't feel it stops at laser-beams, super-colliders, time-space bending gravity centrifuges, or the like. Why can't we be creating real-time? My two cents; keep building the most powerful microscope in the world, keep sending the most sophisticated satellite into the depths of space to measure the universe, cause guess what? Every time you peer into that eyepiece expecting to see something, you will, every time, and do you know why? Cause YOU made it, you gave it a reason to exist, a purpose. Until science recognizes this simple, yet profound truth of consciousness creating all matter real-time based on a purpose and necessity it will never find the smallest particle, or the end of our universe, because we won't entertain the possibilty that right before you looked, it wasn't there yet. Be careful what you create, because until we find God, you're gonna have to do. =} Love, BardoBob

I second that

Submitted by benj on Thu, 04/15/2010 - 04:37.

Brilliant, BardoBob. There is a lot of talk about us as creators, but one must take the leap to know it as truth in real time. Thanks for the reminder.

Rudolf Steiner

Submitted by Inin-Soi on Fri, 04/16/2010 - 10:43.

Bardo Bob, about a hundred years ago Austrian philosopher and white magician Rudolf Steiner was saying exactly the same thing.

bardobob/steiner

Submitted by The hungarian heart on Sun, 04/18/2010 - 07:16.

Looking at Bardobob's comment from another perspective. The Universe as we percieve it has 50000 billion stars in it and is 160 billion light-year wide. I could bring more wierd numbers here but the point is, that just about everything about the universe is beyond reason, logic, sense of human proportion and comprehension. The sheer scale and distances implied by those numbers make it completely impossible to "do" anything with SPACE, you can't travel in it as we simply do not have time( limiting speed of ligth) for conventional speed. If we travel through wormhole-style portholes folding space up than we simply loose space altogether because there are no distances between the points which suppose to be the very definiton of space, it just sort of dissapears (that is of course if we ever would have a real chance for doing that).

Just like Bardobob or (Steiner) I also do believe , that the very act of enquiring creates manifestation but it is more complicated than just simply thinking or doing. It seems for example, that first we have to create usefull technology and using that our investigation sometimes do make new ground for manifestation. The mechanism is beyond me but the when it comes to the universe i honestly do not see why we're even searching further into space. What is the point of "creating" further numbers, to find more "space" and matter. Not to mention that we can never find the end of the universe with a satisfying coherency because that would end our potential for creating further, and so as we can not stop our creative activity we just gonna keep on finding even more impossible results, that we can not possibly build into our sense of reality. Exactly the same way as we can not find any coherent result in our investigation into the fundamentality of the micro-world, we can only "comeup" with more incoherent findings that places the micro-world further and further away from human comprehension.

Okay, but...

Submitted by Bob Gnarly on Sun, 04/18/2010 - 12:55.

it seems to me that everyone is overlooking the painfully obvious... How can our universe be "90% larger" than previously thought...as if it were encapsulated inside of something else? The universe is all-encompassing. There is nothing "outside" of the universe. This is why the expanding balloon example of our universe is flawed from the get-go. What exactly is it expanding "inside" of?!? As if there were some separate entity of nothingness in which our universe was constantly growing... What they meant to say was that we now have the technology that allows us to see more of what we previously could not. The universe is not any larger that it ever was, we just bought a bigger flashlight..

A bigger flashlight

Submitted by Inin-Soi on Mon, 04/19/2010 - 15:18.

Yes, right on to the above comment. And when you've exhausted your supply of progressively bigger flashlights it's time to switch to another mode of enquiry eg deep spirituality. During an ayahuasca ceremony I needed to use the john and whilst sitting there doing my business my soul, my being, zoomed up and out of my body into the deepest reaches of space where I beheld first the Godhead, then, coming closer back to Earth, the cosmic Christ, then, even nearer to our planet, the archangel Michael. My question is: in which universe was I travelling? blessings to all.

NFL JERSEYS

Submitted by Inin-Soi on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 11:35.

I tried one of your NFL jerseys, but just wearing it didn't seem to expand my consciousness or change my state. So I decided to lightly toast it followed by smoking it in a glass pipe. Now I'm feeling really dizzy and keep having flashbacks of the'69 Dolphins - Oilers game. What should I do??

Now my comment makes no sense

Submitted by Inin-Soi on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 19:56.

but thanks for diligently removing the SPAM, a sysiphean labor if ever there was one.

More PBS anyone?

Submitted by searita4 on Wed, 04/21/2010 - 02:24.

I believe that the author of this article was making a simple statement here: We have improved on our Telescope, at one time we used glass and could barely see nine planets...then we used a mirror and could see 10. It's like a candle theory people the brighter it burns the more it illuminates to the human eye. Why the hostility of trying to throw the writer under the bus?