How Scientists accidentally discovered hidden galaxies

Two Japanese astronomers discover galaxies hidden on the “edge of space and time” but what’s most shocking about their findings is that it was completely accidental!

What made their discovery possible

Well it was certainly someone's lucky day when this discovery took place, as the team involved claims the event "happened by pure chance." Although they weren't searching for it, their findings beg a lot of questions about the universe as we think we know it!

A group of Scientists led by Astronomer Yoshinobu Fudamoto made the discovery in Chile using a Atacama Large Millimeter Subarray (ALMA), an astronomical interferometer consisting of 66 radio telescopes. This tool is extremely effective at looking through the environments and accumulating universes located at very large distances, if it weren’t for this device the discovery wouldn’t have occurred. During their observations, the team was able to detect strange bright emissions, thousands of light-years away from the target galaxies previously hidden behind thick clouds of dust, which they traced to study their source. They estimate these two newly discovered galaxies formed approximately 800 million years after the birth of the universe, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. These findings suggest one in five galaxies may be hidden behind this thick veil of dust, which could change the way we think about how stars are made. 

What is spacetime?

If Einstein were alive today he would be astonished by this discovery, since he originally developed the idea of “space-time” with the help of German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, while working on his theory of relativity. This theory involves any mathematical model which fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Although we can thank Einstein for his advanced work, he left behind no user manual, and since these equations are so complex it remains difficult for many people to wrap their head around, which means there is still much more for us to understand.    

The takeaway

This new discovery poses many serious questions in different regards, from the way we believe stars are made to how many galaxies are really hidden out there.

So how many hidden galaxies do you think are out there, and what do you believe is hidden deep within them?