In the Universe were three times more stars than was considered before. More recently, red dwarfs - small dim stars - it was impossible to see beyond our Galaxy and its nearest neighbors. It was assumed that the share of red dwarfs in other galaxies approximately the same as in ours.

But now a team of U.S. astronomers, under the leadership of Peter van Dokkum (Piter van Dokkum), employee at Yale University, one of the leading universities of the USA, used the powerful tools Observatory "Cake" (Observatory is located on the Hawaiian Islands)to detect weak radiation of red dwarfs in eight massive, relatively close elliptical galaxies that are from us at distances of 50 to 300 million light-years. And it turned out that these red dwarfs, mass, which range from 10 to 20% of ordinary stars, far more numerous than expected, with their share in elliptical galaxies in 20 times more than in our star system.

The obtained data may significantly affect aspects of the formation and evolution of galaxies. In particular, it is possible that other galaxies contain much less dark matter than was expected based on previous estimates of their masses, because a significant fraction of the mass of galaxies can be red dwarfs. Since it is likely that these stars have planetary systems, the estimate of the number of planets in the Universe, too, will require a substantial revision upwards.