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The Universe Just Got A Lot Bigger: Scientists Found 300,000 Unseen Light Sources Thought To Be Distant Galaxies

A map of the night sky charting hundreds of thousands of previously unknown galaxies has been revealed.

It was taken using a telescope that can detect faint light sources most optical instruments are unable to see.

The international team behind the unprecedented space survey said their discovery literally shed new light on some of the Universe’s deepest secrets, including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve.

‘This is a new window on the universe,’ Cyril Tasse, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory who was involved in the project, told AFP.

‘When we saw the first images we were like: ‘What is this?!’ It didn’t look anything at all like what we are used to seeing.’

More than 200 astronomers from 18 countries were involved in the study, which used radio astronomy to look at the sky over a quarter of the northern hemisphere, and found 300,000 previously unseen light sources thought to be distant galaxies.

Radio astronomy allows scientists to detect radiation produced when massive celestial objects interact.

The team used the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope in the Netherlands to pick up traces – or ‘jets’ – of ancient radiation produced when galaxies merge. These jets, previously undetected, can extend over millions of light years.

‘With radio observations we can detect radiation from the tenuous medium that exists between galaxies,’ said Amanda Wilber, of the University of Hamburg.

‘LOFAR allows us to detect many more of these sources and understand what is powering them.’

The paper, which was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is only one-half of the sky survey, having surveyed just two percent of the sky, so the astronomers intend to release more data over time.

The discovery of the new light sources may also help scientists better understand the behaviour of one of space’s most enigmatic phenomena.

WHAT IS THE LOFAR TELESCOPE NETWORK?

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope is used to pick up traces, or ‘jets,’ of ancient radiation produced when galaxies merge.

These jets, previously undetected, can extend over millions of light years.

The hope is that LOFAR telescopes can help them to reveal how the universe evolved.

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Scientists first launched the LOFAR telescopes in 2010 in Hampshire, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden and Poland.

The antennae installed across Europe work at the lowest FM frequencies accessible from Earth and are connected using sophisticated computing and high-speed internet.

Black holes – which have a gravitational pull so strong that no matter can escape them – emit radiation when they engulf other high-mass objects such as stars and gas clouds.

Tasse said the new observation technique would allow astronomers to compare black holes over time to see how they form and develop.

‘If you look at an active black hole, the jets (of radiation) disappear after millions of years, and you won’t see them at a higher frequency (of light),’ he said.

Pictured is galaxy cluster Abell 1314 in the constellation Ursa Major, located approximately 460 million light years away. The LOFAR telescope picks up radio emissions from high-speed cosmic electrons, shown here in red, that are produced by collisions with other galaxy clusters

Pictured is a view of the universe through a LOFAR radio telescope. In greyscale, it shows a piece of the sky as if it were being seen in visible light. The orange hues represent radiation 

‘But at a lower frequency they continue to emit these jets for hundreds of millions of years, so we can see far older electrons.’

Huub Rottgering, a professor at Netherland’s Leiden University, added that the scientists hope to use LOFAR to answer the ‘fascinating’ question of: ‘Where do those black holes come from?’

The Hubble telescope has produced images that lead scientists to believe there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, although many are too old and distant to be observed using traditional detection techniques.

The map created by the LOFAR observations, part of which was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, contains data equivalent to ten million DVDs yet charts just two percent of the sky.

The LOFAR telescope (pictured) is made up of a network of radio antenna across seven countries, forming the equivalent of a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) diameter satellite dish

‘We have been working together with SURF in the Netherlands to efficiently transform the massive amounts of data into high-quality images,’ said Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) researcher Timothy Shimwell.

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‘These images are now public and will allow astronomers to study the evolution of galaxies in unprecedented detail.’

The LOFAR telescope is made up of a Europe-wide network of radio antenna across seven countries, forming the equivalent of a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) diameter satellite dish.

The team plans to create high-resolution images of the entire northern sky, which they say will reveal as many as 15 million as-yet undetected radio sources.

‘The oldest objects in the Universe are around 11-12 billion light years old,’ said Tasse. ‘So we are going to see lots more of these objects.’

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them – not even light.

They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them.

Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.

How they are formed is still poorly understood.

Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They cause dips in space-time (artist's impression) and even light cannot escape their gravitational pull

Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.

Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.

Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun’s mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.

When these giant stars die, they also go ‘supernova’, a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.

Source: Dailymail

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