Galaxies Twice As Bright As Previously Thought

Astronomers led by Simon Driver of Scotland's University of St. Andrews have discovered that interstellar dust shades us from as much as 50% of the light emitted by stars and galaxies. The scientists compared the number of galaxies we could see "edge-on" against the number which were "facing us," reasoning that dust would obscure more of the former, since we already receive less light from them. SPACE.com notes, "In fact, the researchers counted about 70 percent fewer edge-on galaxies than face-on galaxies." A NYTimes report provides some additional details: "Interstellar dust absorbs the visible light emitted by stars and then re-radiates it as infrared, or heat, radiation. But when astronomers measured this heat glow from distant galaxies, the dust appeared to be putting out more energy than the stars. 'You can't get more energy out than you put in, so we knew something was very wrong,' said Dr. Driver. The results also mean that there is about 20 percent more mass in stars than previously thought."

Warning!

[Daimanta]

Do not look into galaxy with remaining eye!

Oh NOOOES!

[hyperz69]

Interstellar dust shades us from as much as 50% of the light emitted by stars and galaxies. It's universal darkening. Time to call Al Gore and head out into space. Those space aliens may not care what all the ion fuel is doing to the space environment, but Al will teach them!

Re:So there's more dust than previously thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully there will be too much matter now and we can all build careers around theories of dark anti-matter.

In other news...

[AstronomicUID]

Researchers found to be half as bright as previously thought.

Re:You are ignoring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmh... iceburger...

Because it has always ended badly.

[Jane Q. Public]

Really! Last time, Leo I and Leo II got into it over seniority, and ruined the whole event. Cetus tried to get everyone to get back in their chairs and calm down, and Triangulum made a few good points, but ultimately that was the end of our little get-together.

The time before that, Barnard's brought too much wine, which resulted in that whole inappropriate Sextans thing, remember? Canis Major tried to stick his huge Phoenix into Virgo and little Ursa Minor, and Draco was caught Fornaxing with Carina.

And the time before that, Andromeda called little Sagittarius an ugly dwarf, which started a huge row, and Tucana ended up giving us all the Boötes.

So, this has not exactly turned out to be the best of neigborhoods. I mean, with friends like these, who needs NGCs? No wonder everybody has been putting up those dust fences.

Re:Mod up, please.

[memorycardfull]

My theory is that some observers did not get the joke because the dimming effects of interstellar dust partially obscured its hilarity. This effect could be increased if observers are viewing the joke edge-on. Some hilarious jokes may even be completely undetectable to some observers. If my theory is true, most comments on /. may actually be twice as funny as they seem.

Re:So there's more dust than previously thought...

[SurturZ]

[blockquote]Dark Matter is a theoretical answer to "the universe has more matter than it looks like." If the universe, in fact, actually has more matter, then there's less, possibly zero, need for the hand-waving "Dark matter" theory.[/blockquote]

There has to be a Star Wars joke there somewhere about Dark Matter being a quicker, more seductive way to explain the missing mass, but for the moment it escapes me. (waves hand) this is not the mass you are looking for...