More Stars than Grains of Sand
There are more stars than grains of sand on all of Earth’s deserts and beaches.
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Hold a grain of sand at arm’s length. That’s the size of the enlarged speck of sky pictured to the left.
The image, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in late 2003. A larger image can be seen here: 20MB Image. |
Zooming in reveals something startling: each of those blobs of light isn’t a star; it’s an entire galaxy…
…and the average galaxy contains about 500 billion stars.
It’s hard to put a number that big in perspective, but I’ll try: start counting one star per second when you’re born and you’ll hit one billion when you’re 31 and a half years old. Do it 500 times and you have a single galaxy covered.
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Seventy Sextillion StarsSo, astronomers at the Australian National University used simliar imaging to extrapolate the number of stars in the known visible universe. And (drumroll, please…) they came up with 70 sextillion. Yeah, I know it sounds risqué, but that’s a real live number. It’s 70,000 million million million, is what it is. That’s at least ten times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world’s beaches and all the world’s deserts. Think about it next time you’re shaking out your beach towel. |
Read More: astronomy, science, Hubble, Hubble Telescope, stars, sand
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November 9th, 2006 at 11:54 am
The Universe is awesome…one of my favorite subjects to ponder. Great post.
November 9th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Thanks, James. Just added your link to the sidebar: Genius of Insanity.
Good stuff. Especially like the tagline, “I would rather someone was wrapped in the Constitution burning the flag than wrapped in the flag burning the Constitution.” Amen to that, and come back often!
November 10th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Thanks for the link. I’ve added your blog to my sidebar too. Looking forward to reading more of your stuff. Keep on rockin’
November 10th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Hey Joe: Wanted to tell you that I knew the first person that was ever in charge of the Hubble Telescope. Warren Keller, a Nuclear Phycicist who once worked in MSFC’s Research Projects Office where I worked several years…was the first Guy in charge of the making of Hubble! He has been a good friend of mine for many years. He got the Hubble started and moved on to HIGHER GROUNDS. I enjoyed the children today….Tyler, William and I had a great time up in their rooms. They are wonderful boys. They promised me that they would clean up their rooms each day from now on. Ana…A NEW TOOTH! Ana’s Mom…..very sick and coughing much. Soup left for you - hope you like.
Blessings.
Berta