70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Stars Out There

ChopsMIDI writes "Ever wanted to wish upon a star? Well, you have 70,000 million million million to choose from. That's the total number of stars in the known universe, according to a study by Australian astronomers. It's also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts."

Comments

nice

[Anonymous Coward]

nice

I've figured out the population of the world.

[bons]

By calculating the population of my neighborhood and assuming that my neighborhood has average distribution...

From the article:
That number was then multiplied by the number of similar sized strips needed to cover the entire sky, Driver said, and then multiplied again out to the edge of the visible universe.

I wonder if this sort of "science" is how hardware manufacturers get their numbers?

Re:I've figured out the population of the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

The method is actually fairly accurate - the distribution of galaxies and their density is sufficiently uniform to provide a number that shouldn't be off by more than 7-8%.

A similar approach was used long ago to (quite successfully) estimate the number of galaxies in the universe before we had the technology to measure signals from the farthest ones directly (which was done at first when we had gamma-class radio telescopes).

It's really more clever than it sounds. You just have to take a few mathematical parameters into the equation (for example, Einstein spacetime curvature might distort radiation quantitiy when passing particularly dense areas of space).

Re:I've figured out the population of the world.

[Bootsy Collins]

By calculating the population of my neighborhood and assuming that my neighborhood has average distribution...

From the article:
> That number was then multiplied by the number of similar sized strips
> needed to cover the entire sky, Driver said, and then multiplied again
> out to the edge of the visible universe.

I wonder if this sort of "science" is how hardware manufacturers get their numbers?

Be careful. Do you have a reason to believe that your neighborhood is typical? Do you have data indicating such?

The astronomers in question didn't use such an approach because they're idiots; they used such an approach because we already have a heck of a lot of data about the galaxy distribution. The RMS (fractional) fluctuation in galaxy number count in a random volume the size of the one they surveyed is expected to be tiny; and it's expected to be tiny because of surveys we've already done which indicate such a convergence towards homogeneity as scale increases.

Just amazing

[Blenderkitty]

It's also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts.

Everyone you know, everything you've touched, all of human history, on one of 70,000,000,000,000etc stars...

The universe is so amazing...there's just so much stuff to see out there...I hate being chained to JUST ONE PLANET!

Sand from every world's beaches?

[Tyreth]

And here I am, stuck on earth without a single vessel capable of interstellar travel.

Pretty depressing

Molecules of sand

[philip_bailey]

By my calculations, 7 x 10^22 is the number of molecules in approximately 7 grams of sand. There is certainly "plenty of room at the bottom"...

Re:My property!

[mike_mgo]

More importantly, when are people going to learn that these lame copyright jokes aren't funny or clever. Especially in an article that has NOTHING to do with copyright/SCO/RIAA or whtever.

Re:IPv8?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, beings on planets, not stars, required IP addresses.