If all the galaxies we observe are millions of light years old, how many might exist that we can’t see yet?

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Could there be a galaxy that has developed closer than andromeda that we can’t see just because the light hasn’t reached us yet? How are all of these galaxies around us so old yet evenly distributed? Is there a blank spot in space that galaxies may exist but the light hasn’t reached us?

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If they’re older, we’ll probably never see them because they’re moving away from us faster than the light can reach us. If they’re younger we’ve probably already seen them, they just haven’t formed yet, and this can take millions/billions of years, so again, probably won’t see them. At least, that’s been my understanding of it all.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Galaxies are made of stuff, *lots* of stuff. Enough that even if there wasn’t any light coming from it, we could be able to see that stuff was there from the gravity warping light from behind it.

So no, there can’t be a “new” Galaxy closer than Andromeda that we just haven’t seen yet, because the stuff that makes up the galaxy would have to have been there already.

As for farther away, it’s possible that they have moved and combined so much as to have new galaxies form in the time that the light has been traveling, but it’s not a “dark spot”, because even if there isn’t a galaxy there, there’s probably other galaxies behind it that are just dimmer.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The universe is potentially infinite(we can’t really know) so there’s lots of stuff that can exist that light just haven’t hit us yet. Basically how it works is that looking far out in the universe allows us to look back in time, so the furthest away galaxies were very young when that light was emitted, which allows us to basically see how galaxies form. At least in theory, picking up light from very distant galaxies is very difficult and it’s one of the main focus points of the james webb telescope