90% of the Universe Found Hiding In Plain View

The Bad Astronomer writes "As much as 90% of previously hidden galaxies in the distant Universe have been found by astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Previous surveys had looked for distant (10 billion light years away) galaxies by searching in a wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted by hydrogen atoms — distant young galaxies should be blasting out this light, but very few were detected. The problem is that the ultraviolet light never gets out of the galaxies, so we never see them. In this new study, astronomers searched a different wavelength emitted by hydrogen, and voila, ten times as many galaxies could be seen, meaning 90% of them had been missed before."

Comments

I Smell Another Apple Ad

[WrongSizeGlass]

90% of the Universe was discovered by thinking differently? Steve Jobs just felt a tingle somewhere.

Re:I Smell Another Apple Ad

[PopeRatzo]

And how do they know that they've found 90% of what was previously hidden?

Maybe there's more hidden than they thought was hidden.

Is the size of the universe so widely agreed-upon? Far be it from me to challenge a headline in Science, but I'm just a little curious about this assertion.

Someone update the Drake Equation!

[scorp1us]

Since we just got a 10 fold increase in galaxies.

I think that moves us from 0.006 to 0.06, (plus one obviously)