back to article Australian astroboffins reveal hundreds of hidden galaxies

Data collected by Australia's Parkes radio telescope from as far back as 1997 has led astronomers to declare they've discovered hundreds of galaxies hidden from telescopes by the Milky Way. The result is exciting for astro-boffins, because the mass of the 300 newly-spotted galaxies, plus new and better information about 500 …

  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    We just found a million, billion suns. A million, billion. One quadrillion. 1 x 10^15.

    1,000,000,000,000,000 suns that were just casually blocked behind the core of the Milky Way; a fraction of the observable sky.

    We are insignificant. We are small. And we are all star stuff.

    1. Adam 1

      All of which are attracted to my pancreas*

      *with a force proportional to the product of our masses and inversely proportional to the distance between us.

    2. Denarius

      category confusion ?

      Trevor, how do a lot of integers describing quantities of plasma have any relationship to human significance ? Do families with one child have less "value" than families with lots of kids ?

      The Al Magest astronomy text for a millennium which took its final form around 140AD states the Universe is huge and the Earth very small. Not news at all. Nice to see Parkes is still doing work. Thought Tony had shut it all down as no coal seam gas under it. Does seem odd to see a radio telescope in sheep paddocks. Have to fly up one summer and have a look from a distance.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: category confusion ?

        Significance != value

    3. Adair Silver badge

      It's worth remembering that 'size' has no correlation to 'significance' unless size is the matter in question.

    4. DropBear
      Joke

      Nonsense

      "We are insignificant."

      I strongly object - in fact, I'm on par with a wizard: I can see colours that don't exist! Like pink and magenta! Well, technically so can you (unless you are colour-blind in which case I'm sorry to tell you that you, Sir, are no wizard!), but that only makes my point stronger...

  2. Mage Silver badge
    Alien

    Wonderful

    Fantastic Boffinry

    We didn't really find them, they are not lost :)

  3. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Yeah, okay...

    "...But why is it in a sheep paddock?"

    1. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: Yeah, okay...

      "Why is it in a sheep paddock?" *

      Because it's easier to find the Lamb shift.

      LOL!!!

      * Famous line from the excellent movie, 'The Dish' (about the Parkes radio telescope).

    2. Denarius
      Coat

      Re: Yeah, okay...

      Jelly, you see, its because sheep dont have mobile phones, yet. Unlike sheep in suburbs. Bah, my coats the one with dark green stains

  4. x 7

    "and our whole Milky Way is moving towards them at more than two million kilometres per hour”."

    I don't believe it. If we were moving that fast, the air would rush out of our lungs, we wouldn't be able to breathe

    1. Likkie

      2 million km/h

      Thats really gonna mess someone's hair. Whatever you do don't wind down the window!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 2 million km/h

        Thats really gonna mess someone's hair.

        Trump Galaxies!

      2. Rol

        Re: 2 million km/h

        No throwing cigarette butts out the window

        No throwing cigarette butts out the window

        Now if you look to your right you'll see Saturn

        If you look to the left you'll see Mars

        I hope your brought your parachutes with you

        Hey look out!

        Look out for that door

        Don't open that door

        Don't open that door

        Oh well

        That's the way it goes

        Hey, everything is all right now

  5. Long John Brass

    Check my math

    So that means we are travelling towards this thing at %18.5 the speed of light?

    1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      Re: Check my math

      Your decimal point is two places too far to the right. It's 0.185% of c (where c=1.08x109 km/h).

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    300 newly-spotted galaxies

    Plus new and better information about 500 known galaxies.

    The god-of-the-gaps argument just got waaaaaaaaaaay smaller.

    Of all the planets in all the spiral arms in all the galaxies, god had to walk into mine...

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      Re: 300 newly-spotted galaxies

      What happened to the lesser-spotted galaxies, or have they all gone extinct?

      1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

        Re: 300 newly-spotted galaxies

        they went from spotted to plaid.

  7. frank ly
    Happy

    re. WALLABY

    Which came first, the acronym or the meaning?

    1. Imsimil Berati-Lahn

      Re: re. WALLABY

      Have to admit to rolling my eyes over that rather contrived meta-acronym.

      Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-Sky Blind Survey

      would be WASKAPLLASBS

      but then they're not quite so cute and furry, are they?

      Wouldn't want to imply they're

      Widefield ASKAP Near Ku-band Epiterrestrial Receiver Systems

      for such japery. glass houses, stones etc...

  8. Gene Cash Silver badge
    IT Angle

    What I find more impressive is they've been analyzing this data for 14 to 19 years? Really? Continuously? Has it been running on a dozen 486s in a Beowulf Cluster all that time or is it some background job on a supercomputer somewhere or what?

    1. Denarius
      Unhappy

      impressive, not really

      Gene, you dont know about science budgets in Oz do you ? Lucky they had 486s. After all we have an early 19th century leadership voted in regularly

  9. roger stillick
    Joke

    Cosmography of the Local Universe ??

    ESA several years ago made this 17 min video map..

    Parks and 300 others redid all of the ESA's Space telescope data...

    Seems the WMAP data seemed to be bogus, after 18 months we got the map...

    Joke Alert= Parks is in Stage 1 of the Benchly Park Historical Archiving System,

    OR, take a few pictures and bin it... IMHO=most astro-boffins know this stuff...RS.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gotta be dark matter or something in the structure of spacetime itself

    The Great Attractor has such an insane amount of mass we can't possibly find enough galaxies to account for it.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Maybe, maybe not. This is the Universe we're talking about, and this news proves that we are far from knowing all about it.

      And just think, if the Milky Way was hiding a few hundred galaxies, maybe those could be hiding a few thousand more.

      In any case, thank God for scientists painstakingly going over endless reams of data again and again in order to extract the very last ounce of data.

      Well done, boffins and boffinettes. I salute you.

    2. Denarius

      Re: Gotta be dark matter or something in the structure of spacetime itself

      no dark matter needed. Just include the expansion of space time in the equations as in Carmeli s work and observations match calculation in General Relativity. No fudge factors needed. No Nobels either so probably wont happen. Science progresses one funeral at a time.

  11. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Sounds kinda like The Great Attractor is the drain, and someone's pulled the plug a couple of billion years ago...

  12. waldo kitty
    Boffin

    The Great Attractor

    have we/they been looking in the wrong place for the origin point of the big bang?

    ever watch a cavitation bubble from an explosive suspended in water? it looks very similar to the way the big bang is described to have happened...

    then there's the point where the bubble reaches its maximum expansion and reverses course to converge on the initial point of the explosion... the reversal causes surrounding material to be dragged along and when it all meets in the middle, a huge splash is thrown in the direction of least resistance... one can see similar when viewing videos of nuclear tests... the explosion goes out and then there's the suck that pulls everything back toward the center raking a second swipe over everything not tied down or strong enough to withstand the pressure...

    The Great Attractor? sounds like the place where the original big bang explosion happened and we're all being sucked back in to the originating point...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Great Attractor

      There isn't a 'place' where the Big Bang started, it isn't as though the universe was a big empty space with a hyperdense point particle located somewhere in it that "exploded". Space itself was the size of that point particle, the volume of the universe expanded with it. That's why the cosmic background radiation is observed in all directions.

      Even if there was a particular spot, the chances that it would be located so close to us (relatively speaking) are astronomical.

  13. Tikimon
    Happy

    Obligatory XKCD!

    Apologies if it's been too-recently linked.

    https://xkcd.com/502/

    And I definitely miss her.

  14. Youngone Silver badge

    Big Numbers

    Does anyone else hear "million billion" in a five year old's voice?

    As in "How much do you want for your pocket money"?

    "A million billion dollars"!

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