• Question: When will it be possible to know exactly how many galaxies there are in the universe?

    Asked by masseyo to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by livandrosh, speedysnail13.
    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      This is a difficult question, because we don’t know how big the universe is. We know roughly how many galaxies there are in the bits we can see, but because the universe is 13.7 billion years old, we can only see the light that has reached us from around that time. Hopefully at some point it’ll be possible to know what size the universe is or what made it, but this is a difficult question and I don’t know when people will be able to find out the answer. Maybe if you become a physicist you can help!

    • Photo: Kate Husband

      Kate Husband answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Potentially never – galaxies are still forming in the universe today, or indeed merging together. So whilst we are counting one patch of sky the number of galaxies in another patch of sky is changing.

Comments