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The Universe Has 20 Times More Galaxies Than We Thought (gizmodo.com)
A new study by a team of international astronomers has produced some astounding results: they concluded that the universe contains at least two trillion galaxies -- as much as 20 times more than previously thought. The study adds that 90 percent of all galaxies are hidden from us. This hidden portion can't be seen even with our most powerful telescopes. Gizmodo adds: Consequently, this means we also have to update the number of stars in the observable universe, which now numbers around 700 sextillion (that's a 7 with 23 zeros behind it, or 700 thousand billion billion). And that's just within the observable universe. Because the cosmos emerged some 13.8 billion years ago, we're only able to observe objects up to a certain distance from Earth. Anything outside this "Hubble Bubble" is invisible to us because the light from these distant objects simply haven't had enough time to reach us. It's difficult -- if not impossible -- to know how many galaxies reside outside this cosmological blind spot.
It's very probable. But since we also know that the Periodic Table of Elements is universal, as well as the fundamental forces, we also know things like warp drive are just not feasible...
So they are over there, and we are here. End of story.
So I had to click around awhile, but here's the actual paper:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/...
For some of us, it makes a huge difference if we're reading the actual paper, or trying to understand the watered-down version on a click-bait site.
It doesn't. The Drake equation only applies to the Milky Way. If you want to expand the Drake equation to the entirety of the universe, you take whatever number you get from the Drake equation, and multiply by the number of galaxies in the universe, which keeps being revised upwards with more detection. So at minimum, you are looking at whatever your Drake equation is times a hundred billion.