more stars in the sky than grains of sand on every beach

is there really more stars in the sky than grains of sand on every beach in the world? i heard this somewhere. its just mindboggling. if you pick up a handful of sand...thats just mindboggling there, thats when i look up at the whole stretch of beach, and try to imagine all the beaches in the world.....and wow.

I dont think it was ment to be taken literally. Sand moves on and off of beaches all the time. Truth be, we dont know exactly how many stars there are out there, and we sure as hell dont know how many grains of sand there are on every beach in the world. I think it is just a way to explain that there is a buttload of stars in the sky.

Did you try googling this or asking Jeeves?
There is no way to count all the stars and grains of sand, but I am sure one can use statistics and sampling to get an estimation.

al

Theoretically, there are more stars than grains of sand, if you accept an endless universe.

I once counted the stars, 93462934239495695537498356356395836598376393959387 6 billion and 1 star, that that makes it 93462934239495695537498356356395836598376393959387 7 starts total.

I was watching a doco with a theorietical physicist was saying how there are over 100 billion galaxys, with 100 billion solar systems per galaxy, and if 1 star per solarsystem, that's over 1,000,000 billion stars per galaxy, for a hundred billion...ah fuck i'm lost.

there very well could be an infinite number of stars as well...

New stars are formed and killed everyday. Half the stars we see are probably already dead, its just that the light takes so long to get to Earth that we see light from when they were still alive.

But I believe sivic hit the nail on the head, it's not supposed to be literal. It's just to show that there are a lot of fucking stars out in the universe.

New stars are formed and killed everyday. Half the stars we see are probably already dead, its just that the light takes so long to get to Earth that we see light from when they were still alive.

But I believe sivic hit the nail on the head, it's not supposed to be literal. It's just to show that there are a lot of fucking stars out in the universe. Yep. Alot of star light we see is older that us. Weird thought. The some of the star light we see could be from a star that is already dead. The light (traveling at the speed of light) just hasn't made it over yet. Gives you an idea of how far a13ins have come. And how far or big the universe really is.
I was going to reply to sivic02, but you just covered it.

actually..... there aren't an infinite number of stars seeing as there is a finite amount of matter.

but then again, what are you taking to be stars?
the actual masses or the light that we see?

How can you say matter is finite, and even if accepting that, how do you possibly know the amount of matter in the universe? You don't, simple.

there's a big ass equation they use to calculate the total mass of the universe.
it's goes in part to 'explain' the bag/crash/bang ideas.
e.g above a certain amount of mass, gravity overcomes and you get a recession (eventual crash).
below a certain mass, gravity is overcome and you don't get a crash.
or something like that (might be the other way around).

personally, i don't know the equation nor do i even have an inkling how they worked it out.
basically they know (roughly) how much mass there is.

The easy answer is that there are a finite number of grains of sand on the planet, but there is (supposedly) infinate space so there are more stars then grains of sand.

The harder anser is http://www.tufts.edu/as/physics/courses/physics5/estim_97.html 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand vs http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2003/04aug03/04stars.html 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the sky (known universe) which means there are about 18 times as many stars as grains of sand.













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The number of stars is always changing. I would say infinite because they burn out but new ones are always born.

I with Yogs and texas.

infinite space doesn't mean infinite stars.

the thing with star formation is that it isn't an instant effect, nor do all stars go nova to release matter to reform as stars.
as i asked before, what are you going to take as being stars?
are stars the actual bodies of mass or do you count the points of light that we see?

same thing goes with sand.
how big are you going to go before you call it a pebble/stone/whatever?
how small before it is dust?
is sand becoming dust quicker than stones becoming sand?

oh god..... i just re-read what i typed and i am getting way too anal about this.

My science teacher said this. Or something to that extent. What grade are you in?

>pats drunken on the back, and says "it's okay"<

This isnt really that difficult to figure out. In fact if you were so inclined with some simple density measurements you would easily be able to figure out that if you had one grain of salt for every star in the milky way galaxy (our galaxy which is only one of hundreds of billions) you would have enough salt to completely fill an olympic sized swimming pool. Personally I can easily immagine a couple hundred billion of these pools out matching the amount of sand on nothing more than the beaches on eath.

"Are there really an infinite number of parallel universes?" "Nope, just the two."

IBnoonewilgetit.