(Motherboard) The observable universe boasts at least 10 times as many galaxies as originally estimated, according to research published on Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal. This means that the cosmic census of galaxies, which has been conventionally pegged at around 100 to 200 billion, may be closer to a whopping two trillion individual galactic systems.
The surprising discovery is the result of a meticulous galactic survey mined from 15 years’ worth of deep space observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. An international team led by University of Nottingham astrophysicist Christopher Conselice compiled the Hubble data into a three-dimensional timeline of galactic evolution over the universe’s history.
