Astronomers Might Have Found Some Hidden Galaxies In Our Universe

Some astronomers gleaning from data collected by the SPIRE Herschel Space Observatory believe that they have discovered some hidden galaxies. Astrophysicist Chris Pearson of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England is one spearheading this research that might have made a striking discovery.

Uncovering Hidden Details About Our Universe

The SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) instrument’s mission lasted for four years before coming to an end in 2013. During its active period, the instrument collected data about the universe.

Now this data is forming the foundation for a new set of studies that aim to uncover what is hiding within our universe. Speaking on this research, Pearson says that it is pushing “the science with Herschel to its absolute limit, probing far below what we can normally discernibly see and potentially revealing a completely new population of galaxies that are contributing to the very faintest light we can observe in the universe.”

Pearson believes that some details about our universe are hidden, “obscured by the intervening dust” and unveiling what’s hidden might alter our understanding of the universe. He says that “roughly half of the energy output of the universe is from starlight that has been absorbed by dust and reemitted as cooler infrared radiation.”

Relying on long-wavelength infrared lights might keep some details concealed, so there’s a need to observe the universe using optics. Since this research is based on the data from SPIRE, which uses the longest infrared wavelengths, the astronomers had to stack 141 images on top of each other.

Doing this helped them to create a more immersive image of our universe, unlike what SPIRE offers. This reveals some of the dustiest galaxies where some star formation starts, but their technique gave room for a unique issue.

A Solution That Revealed Some Hidden Galaxies

The unique issue that this research posed was that the technique put to used made the images too deep. This revealed too many galaxies, hence overcrowding the image, making individual objects merge.

Thomas Varnish, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, identifies how the research was able to overcome this issue. He says that the “research employed statistical techniques to get around this overcrowding, analysing the blurriest parts of the image to probe and model the underlying distribution of galaxies not discernible in the original image.”
By doing this, they found “possible evidence of a completely new, undiscovered population of faint galaxies hidden in the blur of the image—too faint to be detected by conventional methods in the original analysis.” These hidden galaxies might reveal more details about our universe and its energy generation.