you know, once, for 20 min…
Oh, forget it…
Interesting to note that Archimedes addressed the question of haw many grains of sand it would take to fill the universe (as he knew it), wau back in the third century BCE. It’s usually translated as “The Sand Reckoner”. In the course of his investigations, to make the problem tractable, Archimedes invented a sort of scientific notation. Fascinating Stuff:
6,934,385,563,654,372,249,762,123,847,935,882
My post is my cite
Yes, but while you were counting, a few quintillion lost some of their mass and became grains of silt. Go back and count faster next time.
Ok, I’ll bite - How can anyone say how many stars there are in the universe? Do we have an idea of how large this infinite thing is?
My guess is: we know the volume of the visible universe (i.e., the sphere with radius of the most distant visible object); we know the density of galaxies in our neighbourhood; and we know roughly the number of stars in an average galaxy. Multiply those three numbers together, and you have an estimate of the number of stars.
Dammit – I looked that time. If you don’t put “Archimedes” in your post, it ain’t my fault…
Actually, it’s a little-known fact that there are really only seven. The rest are impostors.
Fool: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason
Lear: Because they are not eight?
Fool: Precisely. You’d make a fine fool.
According to the Science Channel, there are more stars than grains of sand. I just learned that today.
Are we including cat litter?