With every year, month, week, day, hour, and minute that passes, we’re approaching the retirement of Hubble, the telescope operated by NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency). Everything must come to an end, and it even applies to a powerful telescope such as Hubble.
Galaxies interacting with each other don’t represent something unusual in the Universe. Hubble just spotted such an incredible sight, and you can see the outcome below:
Hubble caught a glimpse of two interacting galaxies, called Arp 91, locked in a dangerous dance more than 100 million light-years from Earth!
In this #HubbleFriday image, we see how immense gravitational attraction is causing these galaxies to interact: https://t.co/lqmhYfsnzY pic.twitter.com/9ZmMTA4YCF
— Hubble (@NASAHubble) October 8, 2021
In November, if everything goes according to the plan, the Hubble telescope will be replaced with a brand new one. Known as the James Webb Space Telescope, the new gear is supposed to take astronomy at an entirely different level. Astronomers hope to uncover new information about the galaxies from the early Universe.
Trying to uncover the history of the Universe
According to the Big Bang Theory, the Universe began to exist roughly 13.7 billion years ago. Until that moment, it’s pretty much uncertain what could have existed. A widespread misconception is that science claims that there wasn’t anything before the Big Bang, as astronomer Michelle Thaller reveals. Observing the first galaxies that illuminated the Cosmos would surely uncover a lot about the first few hundreds of thousands of years from the Big Bang.
Astronomers estimate that in the entire Universe, there are trillions of galaxies. In fact, nobody knows exactly how big the Universe really is. Scientists generally call “Universe” what they actually mean by the observable Universe. The “true” Universe could be even millions of times bigger, but the light from the most distant parts didn’t have enough time during the 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang to arrive at us. Even for something like light, which travels at the fastest speed possible, time is sometimes a luxury.
