The World's Most Powerful Telescope Just Discovered 1,230 New Galaxies (yahoo.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from Vice: On Saturday night astronomers at the South African MeerKAT radio telescope array fired up 16 of its recently completed dishes and released the first ever image from what is slated to become the world's most powerful radio telescope. The initial results were incredibly promising: operating with only one quarter of the 64 dishes that will eventually comprise MeerKAT, the telescope was able to find 1300 galaxies in a small corner of the universe where only 70 galaxies were known to exist previously.
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes a report Agence France-Presse: MeerKAT's full contingent of 64 receptors will be integrated next year into a multi-nation Square Kilometer Array (SKA) which is is set to become the world's most powerful radio telescope. The images produced by MeerKAT "are far better that we could have expected," the chief scientist of the SKA in South Africa, Fernando Camilo said at the site of the dishes near the small town of Carnarvon, 600 kilometres north of Cape Town. When fully up and running in the 2020s, the SKA... will have a discovery potential 10,000 times greater than the most advanced modern instruments and will explore exploding stars, black holes, dark energy and traces of the universe's origins some 14 billion years ago.

Comments

That much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the images are that much better than expected then someone didn't do their math...

Re:That much better?

[bjwest]

You mean count the number of things we don't know exist? OK then, you give it a go.

Re:That much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the fact that we developed a stronger radio telescope caused them to exist because they were just a probability until they were observed

Re:That much better?

[bjwest]

They still existed even though we didn't know about them. Our knowledge of them may have been a probability, but they were always there, along with the countless others we know nothing about.

Re:That much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Things are engineered to at least meet the specified requirements. Many times you do better than the requirements. You don't always know how much better until you actually test the thing. This is especially true when you're at the leading edge, doing things no one has done before.

As an example, a bridge is engineered to carry at least a certain load, but exactly how much weight will it really carry? You won't know exactly unless you test it to failure. Do you consider that to be a math failure too?

Re: That much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoooosh!

Re: That much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh (to your whoosh)! Study a little more physics and you will realize there is a little thing called decoherence. Things exist whether or no we observe them. Only in very carefully controlled laboratory experiments can we eliminate decoherence. In the real world it means we effectively live in one universe governed by probability only on the small scales.

Re: That much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. There are some that think Schrödinger's cat is actually in limbo until the experimenter opens the box. Hell, you have people who think the whole universe is an illusion to test our faith in their imaginary old bearded man sitting in the sky.

Re:That much better?

[Methadras]

Wut? So are you trying to apply an existential theory of galaxy discovery? Everything that exists in the universe now already exists, is going out of existence, no longer exists, or is about to exist. Our observance of these things is just that an observance. Just because we are seeing them for the first time doesn't mean they weren't there the whole time until we got a more powerful telescope and VIOLA!!! They popped into existence because of it. lulz.

Re: That much better?

[Mojo Geek]

I vote for the imaginary old bearded man in the sky

Periscope

[ralfmuschall]

Now Twitter has to top that and build an array with 128 receptors.

At this point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this just stamp-collecting? We already have pictures of many many many galaxies. They are pictures of things hundreds of thousands of light years across. Is getting one more bunch of pixels all that amazing or useful?

Re:At this point...

[Ramze]

Maybe. We've learned that galaxies are often in clusters, and that many are moving either together or towards a single location known as "the great attractor." If we can figure out these new galaxies' red-shifts and motion, we might learn more about the structure of the universe and in turn learn more about dark matter, dark energy, and other mysteries.

Re:At this point...

[baker_tony]

Yeah, it's not as if we're discovering anything new anymore! Why on earth are people always wanting to push limits and go further!?
Waste of time when we could all just be playing Pokemon.

Re: At this point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually people on Earth should do well to stop pushing limits and learning instead to live within them. We wouldn't be in the environmental mess we're in now if we had grown up earlier and understood what our place is.

Re: At this point...

[JustBoo]

Actually people on Earth should do well to stop pushing limits and learning instead to live within them. We wouldn't be in the environmental mess we're in now if we had grown up earlier and understood what our place is.

You are actually dead, did you know that? Quite dead. Brain-wise, social-wise and most importantly, intellectually you are dead. A zombie with a cell phone and no actual interest in life outside a safe-place and a cookie. You are bereft of any life-giving humanity. You sit alone behind a window and lookout disapprovingly while real life passes you by... everyday.

Re:At this point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is some news from this year about the Great Attractor:

Professor Staveley-Smith and his team reported that they found 883 galaxies, of which over one third have never been seen before. “The Milky Way is very beautiful of course and it’s very interesting to study our own galaxy but it completely blocks out the view of the more distant galaxies behind it,” he said.

The team identified new structures in the ZOA that could help explain the movement of The Milky Way, and other galaxies, towards The Great Attractor, at speeds of up to 200 million kilometres per hour. These include three galaxy concentrations, named NW1, NW2, and NW3, and two new clusters, named CW1 and CW2.

Slashcode, *sigh*

[sootman]

"... the worldÃ(TM)s most powerful radio telescope..."

Yeah. That character encoding will get you every time. Maybe you should have hit 'preview'?

Look: I *know* character encoding is hard. But the simple ones -- curly quotes, en- and em-dashes, etc. -- are a SOLVED PROBLEM. A bunch of open-source rich-text editors solved this AGES ago. Maybe a DECADE ago by now. A few basics will save you in 99 cases out of 100.

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Christopher Fritz]

Problem is, the preview probably showed the text as it was input, with proper encoding. At least, that's what I saw testing the story submit right now in Firefox version 47 on Linux. So it must only be after the submission goes through that the encoding is broke. I know that “this” shows the expected quote marks in the comment preview, but don't know how it will look when submitted.

This is an area where EditorDavid should have corrected the submission, though.

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring back timothy

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Hognoxious]

Can you think of a good reason why the preview should do a different transformation to the actual post?

N.B. I said a good reason. Some fuckhead doing copy-paste rather than using a subroutine and they've subsequently drifted apart is only a reason.

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be Slashdot without some fat Autissimo failing at basic communication.

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bring back timothy"

Hell, no. Next thing, you will be fawning after Roblimo, and his amateurish, in the worst sense of the word, videos.
The "New" Slashdot has yet to prove itself, and as much as I dislike certain current Editorial stances, I do not wish to see the return of "3D Gun Nuts Proving The Whole Premise Is Wrong By Inadvertent Examples" presented daily by a tongue dragging and drooling Timothy.

A great Captcha: yonder

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the person is using a TTF/Unicode font with 16-bit character code. When that gets converted to utf8 text for submission, those jumbo unicode characters get split into two 8-bit characters. One becomes the à character. The other becomes something in the range 0 to 255, but is more likely to be filtered out.

It's a big pain for SQL databases.

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Try answering the question that was asked, timothy.

Re:Slashcode, *sigh*

[sootman]

What's extra funny is that it's a lowercase a-with-tilde in the box -- even in the text box you get after you hit 'preview' -- but it gets converted to an uppercase a-with-tilde when submitted.

http://i.imgur.com/NgoUR8w.png

Bonus funny: the story still isn't fixed, 3 days later.

Now they just have to find one galaxy.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's far far away.

They knew it would do this

[Kjella]

Already KAT-7, the seven test radio telescopes that preceded this was sensitive enough to make new discoveries. And it's only going to get better from here, with the full SKA operational it'll be a new world for radio astronomy.

Re:They knew it would do this

[rtb61]

South Africa seems to be in terminal decline. It's likely the array will be stripped for scrap metals before it can do much at all http://www.dailypioneer.com/co.... Cheaper is rarely better.

'Shopped!

[jbmartin6]

You can tell from the pixels this is fake

Re:'Shopped!

[stealth_finger]

You can tell from the pixels this is fake

Forget the pixels, look at the shadows! All over the place!

nah

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet their not "new".
I bet their pretty second hand and old.
A better headline would read.
Telescope spots previously uncharted galaxies..
But that would mean a blog or "journalist" being accurate and having some understanding of how to use the English language correctly..

Re: nah

[Anonymous Coward]

But *you* didn't use it correctly.

Fucking Racists

[Anonymous Coward]

The galaxies were already there. Astronomers didn't 'discover them'. Astronomer are just demonstrating the rampant cultural imperialism.

This is how the uber edumicated left leaning astronomer types denigrate those that say 'Columbus discovered America' I wonder if they will remain consistent and now decry the evil of telescopes with the same vitriol they use to decry evil white Europeans.

Probably not.

So I will say this:

Great Job Telescopes! You really discovered those galaxies. They sure did not exist before you bothered looking up.

I know this comment makes no sense, but neither does the rampant liberalism exhibited by most Astronomer types, so I consider it even.

Re:Fucking Racists

[NotInHere]

All the photons doing the hard work of getting here to tell us these amazing stories about these galaxies, and now the telescopes get all the credit for it. How selfish of us.

Re:Fucking Racists

[Anonymous Coward]

These wavelengths are far too long to act like photons. Their wave-like properties completely dominate.

Re:Fucking Racists

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know this comment makes no sense, but neither does the rampant liberalism exhibited by most Astronomer types, so I consider it even."

You actually have a point. How did you ever get around to it, between kicking puppies to the curb after Breakfast, and eating Kittens for lunch, whole, and with Hot Sauce?

Science, all Science, has a "Liberal" bent. It's called "The Scientific Method". Create Models of how things work, change those Models as investigation continues, and throw out those Models in favor of newer Models when intellectually necessary.
This is the form of current Scientific Darwinian Thinking. And it works.

I am quite happy that your own internal and malignant vile will soon consume you, and you will shortly after this, just be fertilizer. And nobody will give a damn. You have contributed nothing, and nothing will be your legacy.

Go Astronomers!

and now what

[Anonymous Coward]

So we know there are another 1000+ galaxies,is that meant to be news or of any use to us ?
Why are we still spending such huge amounts of cash and resources that could be much better used looking at stuff localy,like the solar system we live in,or gawd forbid,the bloody planet we seemed to have buggered..
It's not as if k owing there are more galaxies out there is going to change anything,I don't care how good a map of known space we have,none of us are going there and nobody is coming here from out there.
It's possibly a good ide to cut 95% of spending etc from space budget and spend it finishing exploring the tiny little bit of rock and water that we live on,that way we may still be here and in some kind of position to do something about it if the 5% we do spend actually do find out something useful..
We already have some much data that it will take generations to understand properly what we have already logged,if ever at all,most of it will probably be wasted as folk always want to work with the newest batches of data,all that will keep happening is that different generations will keep 're-discovering the same things because they have been buried in too much data that has I my been glanced at..swamped with data that nobody looks at,just like the problem with folk being more and more specialised,not realising that others have found the same thing out three times before,but only published in one paper,and one specialist journal that nobody ever reads...

Re:and now what

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the 1% must be fed and clothed. Would you rather they be like the rest of us? Where is your understanding?

Re:and now what

[Anonymous Coward]

The real travesty here is the money wasted on your public education.

But does it run linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking yes it does! Debian in fact.

https://casper.berkeley.edu/wiki/ROACH

In fact, one of the telescopes builders has visited the last debconf and made a talk about his telescope: http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2016/debconf16/Professional_OpenSource_Radio_Astronomy.webm

He was also hinting about some "big" press release that was coming up. Maybe it was this story?

Re:But does it run linux?

[silentcoder]

And the control code to keep all those dishes synchronized (critical for arrays), and the code to analyze and combine the signals and... oh every other piece of code they have - is all written in Python.

And How Many God-Created?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, almost every single one.

Now THAT is cool to know... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I actually looked up what you note in "the great attractor" & learned a new thing today thanks to you...

* Thanks!

APK

P.S.=> As the 'infamous they' say? "It's not a wasted day if you learn even 1 new thing that day" or something along those lines... apk

Re:Now THAT is cool to know... apk

[meglon]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... If you want to see something mind blowing, watch that. The accent might be a bit difficult at times (obviously depending on what you're used to normally), but it's 17 minutes you'll want to spend doing the same thing over again. A couple minutes in it changes format a little and really puts us in our place.

Re:Now THAT is cool to know... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, APK, this is the first of your many, many, posts that shows that you aren't so entirely self-absorbed. Don't let it happen again.

The quote about learning:
"As I get older, I forget at least three things every day. But I try to make up for it by learning four new things. On balance, I know one more new thing every day. Unless I forget it." -Feynman. (As attributed by Frank Oppenheimer.)

dark matter, huh?

[slashmydots]

So they thought there were 70 galaxies in a given location and there were actually 1300 galaxies but they're very confident they counted the total amount of visible, normal matter in the entire universe, some of which is not actually observable. Yes, I am SO SURE that dark matter isn't a calculation mistake.

Re:dark matter, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see your calculations which merge cosmological theory with observations.

Re:dark matter, huh?

[Bite The Pillow]

You literally have just enough information to be clearly wrong, and demonstrably so. Educate yourself a bit, then come back so I can deal with something a bit more concrete than just window licking and pants on head stupid.

Re:dark matter, huh?

[iggymanz]

There is evidence of dark matter in our own Milky Way, there is ten times the matter than is accounted for by visible matter, and the distribution is roughly spherical not disk-shaped. the distribution of the rotational velocity of stars about the center can't be accounted for by visible matter either

Re:dark matter, huh?

[Applehu Akbar]

There is evidence of dark matter in our own Milky Way, there is ten times the matter than is accounted for by visible matter, and the distribution is roughly spherical not disk-shaped. the distribution of the rotational velocity of stars about the center can't be accounted for by visible matter either

#BlackMatterLives

Re:dark matter, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the posting history. That poster is either a troll, or willfully wrong considering how often they have posted on similar topics and gotten massive amounts of comments pointing out what beginner level reading on the topic would convey.

Re:dark matter, huh?

[stealth_finger]

You matter, until you multiply yourself by the speed of light squared. Then you energy.

Re:dark matter, huh?

[tohoward]

To be a bit more clear (and likely pedantic), there is observational evidence of matter moving in such a way that cannot be explained by the gravitational force alone. This observation is been made in our own galaxy, and can be mathematically accounted for by assuming a distribution of something that generates gravitational force (and the weak force) but doesn't otherwise exhibit any of the properties of what we currently think of as matter.

It seems that the scientific community has a love-fest with the gravitational force to the point they postulate the existence of something not observed to generate it. Direct and Indirect experiments have been proposed and/or done to detect this stuff, but no conclusive evidence seems forthcoming.

Re:dark matter, huh?

[iggymanz]

I disagree, "experiments" can include observations of the universe.

  there are other evidences for dark matter, even in the CMB.

Love fest with gravitational force? It is the force that fits the observations

Re:dark matter, huh?

[tohoward]

No. The gravitational force, along with an assumed distribution of something that hasn't been observed but must be common, can explain the motion.

I certainly agree that the observations are valid...but it seems to me (and yes, I'm an amateur that doesn't work in the field) that the solution was assumed and fit to the observations. The assumption of the solution (gravitational force) is the "love fest" part. This, to me, seems obvious as an outsider looking in.

I'm not even arguing against what's being proposed ("dark matter") as a potential solution, I'm just pointing out the bias as I see it: "Wow, look at that, I wonder what distribution of mass is generating that gravitational force to produce that motion?"

Re:dark matter, huh?

[iggymanz]

No. The gravitational force, along with an assumed distribution of something that hasn't been observed but must be common, can explain the motion.

that's the very definition of dark matter

This is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad to see these fruits of scientific labor advancing mankind in the midst of religion and feral humanity regressing it.

Yet, still 0% discovered...

[ls671]

Yet, still 0% discovered if we assume the universe is infinite. Anything divided by infinite equals 0.

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Big assumption there...

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[colinwb]

"Anything divided by infinite equals 0" -- Large correction: not necessarily. For example, using a non-standard model of the rational (or real) numbers:
(a) any positive finite non-zero number divided by a positive infinite number is a positive infinitesimal number, that is a number greater than 0 but smaller than any positive "standard" number;
(b) if n is a positive infinite number and N is a greater infinite number then N/n is greater than or equal to some finite positive standard number, and might be infinite.
Non-standard analysis
Surreal number - Slashot connection - Donald Knuth invented the name "Surreal number" (one construction of surreal numbers was invented by the mathematician John Horton Conway)

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[stealth_finger]

Yet, still 0% discovered if we assume the universe is infinite. Anything divided by infinite equals 0.

The space might be infinite but there are a finite number of things in it.

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[silentcoder]

Douglas Adams begs to differ.

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[cellocgw]

The space might be infinite but there are a finite number of things in it

Douglas Adams begs to differ.

Probably

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[RockDoctor]

if we assume the universe is infinite.

If you assume that, then I am sure that you have a good reason for making that assumption. What is your reason - or reasons?

I see no reason to make that assumption.

Re:Yet, still 0% discovered...

[ls671]

Please don't talk about things your humain brain can't understand and have a look at my signature.

Cheers and have a nice day! ;-)

We will find star wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Long long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

All that is wrong with Slashdot

[belthize]

Once upon a time (15+ years ago) this kind of topic would have garnered a lot of interesting discussion. Slowly but surely the posts have become less informed and more cynical. Now a topic like this just generates a raft of cynical stupidity. Not even sure why I come here anymore.

Re:All that is wrong with Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You come here because as bad as it is, it is far better than comment boards on general news sites and youtube. Though I agree, it is getting harder to tell the difference.

standing up to take a look

[BenBoy]

Little thing, but what an amazing name for a telescope. According to the site, it's 'more KAT' (the original name for the array), as well as, of course, the unbearably cute mammal that lives in the area. But that, along with the "standing up to look around" mission of the array itself makes me absolutely convinced that I live in a novel of some sort (most likely Dickens, who liked to name his characters with oddly appropriate names (I'm lookin' at you, Ms. Malaprop)).

Re:standing up to take a look

[silentcoder]

That is correct, meerkat is a loanword in English from Afrikaans (there aren't many but this is one of the few - others include zebra and veld), KAT was the first, tiny stage of the array, and 'meer' is the Afrikaans for 'more' (also for 'lake' for some reason) - meerKAT then is, indeed, a cute and clever name.

Re:standing up to take a look

[dave420]

German has a similar pair: 'mehr' (more) and 'Meer' (sea/ocean). English also has something similar, but less obvious: 'more' and 'marine' (from the latin 'Mare' meaning sea).

Re:standing up to take a look

[RockDoctor]

German has a similar pair:

You are aware that Afrikaans is southern-exported Swamp German? It's al lot closer to German than English or Norwegian are.

Mind boggling

[Smiddi]

1230 new galaxies. So that's about 100 thousand million stars in EACH galaxy? This is simply mind boggling.

Re:Mind boggling

[Anonymous Coward]

And several hundred thousand million planets in each galaxy, a percentage of which are certainly Earth-like and could support life as we know it.

Re:Mind boggling

[stealth_finger]

I refuse to believe we're the best the universe can do.

Re:Mind boggling

[silentcoder]

Hell, I refuse to believe we're the best EARTH can do. If the best didn't exist in the 4.3 billion years before we showed up - it will exist in the expected 5-billion odd years after we're long gone.

Re:Mind boggling

[Anonymous Coward]

1230 new galaxies. So that's about 100 thousand million stars in EACH galaxy? This is simply mind boggling.

And that is just in the one place they looked.

Re:Mind boggling

[Anonymous Coward]

1230 new galaxies. So that's about 100 thousand million stars in EACH galaxy? This is simply mind boggling.

I'm surprised no one caught this. It's much more likely there are 100,000 to 200,000 stars per galaxy. Not 100 thousand million stars in each galaxy. ~

Re:Mind boggling

[RockDoctor]

Actually we've only got around a billion years before the increasing solar temperature (due to accumulation of helium in the core) triggers a runaway greenhouse effect and ... sayonara anything that depends on liquid water.

With "geoengineering, we might be able to extend it to a couple of billion years.

Re:Mind boggling

[silentcoder]

I doubt very much we have that much. The average life expectancy of a species is 10 million years - we'are already there (depending how you define 'human'). But a billion years ? Highly unlikely. A few species that old exist, but they are the one or two out of hundreds of millions - the odds are definitely against us.

That does raise the suggestion that - when this happens, as it starts at least, the animals that replace us will evolve for this ever hotter climate. It's not entirely unreasonable to think there will be life here until the sun swallows the earth up entirely - or not too long (relatively speaking) before. Human life - doubt it.

Re: Mind boggling

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the Milky Way is a rather average galaxy and has 100 billion stars, the post sounds pretty much right on.

Re:Mind boggling

[RockDoctor]

It's not entirely unreasonable to think there will be life here until the sun swallows the earth up entirely

Actually, it is entirely unreasonable to assume that. For hundreds of millions of years before the Sun "swallows the Earth" (itself still only about a 50% probability ; predicting the exact degree of stellar swelling in the red giant phase is beyond current astrophysics), the Earth will be baked to the degree of Mercury, then Venus, then maybe to the point of a magma ocean then erosion by the plasma of the Solar atmosphere.

But hundreds of millions or billions of years before then, the slow increase in Solar output will increase terrestrial temperatures (research the "faint young sun paradox" for more info). Note - we're talking about changing Solar luminance, not changing the Sun's size. The size may change a little, but only a few %. The big growth of the red giant phase is still far in the future.

You may have noticed that to maintain our current approximately 15 K of global warming (from atmosphere-free equilibrium to our current temperatures, globally averaged), over the last couple of billion years the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has gone down from multiple percent to multiple parts per million. Eventually the reduction in global warming achieved by that reduction in CO2 will stop - because there won't be any more CO2 to remove from the atmosphere. At that point, the increasing Solar flux will start to increase surface temperatures (regardless of what humans do about it, except geoengineering) and the next greenhouse gas will start to take over. That is water vapour. And as temperatures rise, the oceans will get hotter, leading to more atmospheric water, leading to increased greenhouse effect, leading to increased temperatures. The observant may spot the presence of a positive feedback loop there.

That is when it gets very hard to predict exactly what will happen. But an increasing trend (driven by the laws of nuclear fusion in the core of the Sun) driving a positive feedback loop is a recipe for runaway. Best current estimate is that it'll happen around a billion years from now (+/- 20% ?)

When that feedback takes over, the Solar system will have two baked-atmosphere planets in the inner system - Venus and the Earth.

Are you aware of life forms that can live in an atmosphere of super-critical steam and nitrogen?

==========
Actually, I'll revise slightly. I can conceive of genetically engineering organisms that could survive in the atmosphere by using gas bladders to balloon to a pressure level where the temperatures and pressures are manageable. Te bladde would probably make sex difficult. But if cephalopods can invent "copulation by guided missile", I don't see that as an insurmountable problem.
Can I conceive of such evolving naturally ? Hmmm, much harder. Portuguese Man o'War might be a workable model. Vertebrates that can give birth and nurture on the wing ... that's a big ask. I'd hesitate to say it's completely impossible, but it's a big ask. I note that we don't see seasonal (in the sense of perihelion/ aphelion) colour changes in the clouds of Venus, suggesting that Venusians of 3 billion years ago failed to make the transition when the time came for them.

The billion years in the future date relies on the details of atmospheric modelling (much more complex than nuclear reactions) ; but that the seas will boil long before the Sun starts to grow appreciably is a robust result.

Re:Mind boggling

[silentcoder]

Nope, not aware of any creature that can live in that, but we've found creatures in every environment on earth no matter how inhospitable to all other known life. Extremeophile bacteria living around volcanic vents in the deepest trenches of the ocean. Single celled organisms that live in the dead sea.

Nothing like that exists - but if the change is gradual enough - something might. Live seems to live everywhere it can't.

And then they discovered...

[Anonymous Coward]

And then they discovered that the lens cap was on and filled with dirt.

Enter the pedant...

[gklinger]

I'm an old and obnoxious astronomer so I'm going to make the obligatory complaint about the oxymoronic term "radio telescope". "Tele" refers to the visual spectrum of light, not radio. The MeerKAT is, in fact, a radio interferometer.

Please proceed to contradict and/or down vote this post. Your cooperation is assumed.

Re:Enter the pedant...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be pedantic, not "tele" refers to the visual spectrum but "scope". Ancient Greek "tele" means "far" and "skopos" means "watcher". I have no problem with extending "watcher" to the non-visual part of the spectrum, it's closer than "listener" or othert terms related to human sense organs.

Re:Enter the pedant...

[bruce_the_loon]

Dear Mr Old and Obnoxious astronomer, please take note that tele doesn't refer to the visible spectrum of light, nor does it refer to electromagnetic radiation. It is a prefix coming from the Greek word tele meaning far.

The second part of the word, scope, is derived from the Latin and Greek words scopium and skopein meaning to look at

So the combined word telescope means to look at far/distant, nothing more, nothing less, and that is why we have optical telescopes (for optical distant viewing), radio telescopes (for distant radio viewing) and so forth.

So while you are correct that MeerKAT is a radio interferometer, as is any observing system using multiple imagers, it is a telescope as it is looking at distant objects.

Re:Enter the pedant...

[dave420]

Don't forget 'confused by Greek' when describing yourself in the future :)

C'mon

[blocked_lol]

"The world's most powerful telescope just discovered 1230 new galaxies"

C'mon, they couldn't discover 4 more?

South Africa ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck.

The blacks will have it stripped and in the junkyard the instant the scientists backs are turned.

I didn't know they even had electricity in SA.

Christopher Columbus

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same kind of racism and white privilege that says Columbus "discovered" America.

Re: Christopher Columbus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I'm sure aliens have seen those galaxies before!

jagoan5555

[Anonymous Coward]

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Comment

[WallyL]

Shoot, there went the neighborhood!

That IS a pretty impressive image...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ska.ac.za/releases/20160716.php shows a small patch of it and says that image "spans about the area of the Earth's moon". Assuming they meant to say the moon's diameter it would mean that the big image is approximately 3 degrees square.

It would be nice to know exactly where that patch of sky is though; to match it up with a visible image.