Texas Scientists Make Incredible Discovery That Changes Space As We Know It

By Dani Medina

March 3, 2023

In this handout photo provided by NASA, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephans Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, in a new light on July 12, 2022 in space. This enormous mosaic is Webb's largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moons diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

Photo: Getty Images

Space as we know it just got a whole lot bigger.

Scientists with the University of Texas recently announced they have located and mapped over 180,000 new galaxies and nearly 5,000 possible black holes, KXAN reports. They were able to do this using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in West Texas, which is able to detect light emitted by hydrogen from 10 billion light years away. This light is what signals the creation of new stars. Using this telescope, scientists identified 181,028 galaxies and 4,976 "active galactic nuclei," which signal a black hole, the news outlet reported.

Throughout the project, which began in 2017, researchers sorted through over 60 terabytes of data.

The following authors were among those listed in the Astrophysical Journal report: Erin Mentuch Cooper, Karl Gebhardt, Dustin Davis, Daniel J. Farrow, Chenxu Liu, Gregory Zeimann, Robin Ciardullo, John J. Feldmeier, Niv Drory and Donghui Jeong.

Check out the full report.