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    Did someone once say, "There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on every beach in the world?" And if so, what is the sum of the factors for a score.

    Question #40961. Asked by DogRL. (Nov 10 03 3:22 AM)


    Doug1230

    		This past July, Dr Simon Driver, of the Australian National University Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, concluded that there are 70 thousand million million million stars in the universe. He and his research team counted all the galaxies, which are large collections of stars, in one small region of the universe close to Earth. By measuring how bright each galaxy is, they were able to estimate how many stars it contained and extrapolated this out to the whole region of the Universe visible through telescopes.

    Nov 10 03, 7:21 AM
    Linus_337

    		A. U. of Hawaii study figures around 7 quintillion grains of sand in the world's beaches.

    http://www.shorelifechurch.org/2003_08_24_glogarch.htm

    The methodology for the estimate was probably not too dissimilar to the following:

    Draw a 1 cm segment. Mark points along the segment to get an estimate of the number of tightly packed grains of sand in 1 linear cm. From there, calculate the number of grains of sand in a cubic centimetre and then calculate the number of grains of sand in 1 cubic km.

    http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:aaTinbhJO2cJ:nbsp.sonoma.edu/resources/presentations/nbsp_distances/nbsp_distances.ppt+%22au%22%2B%22hawaii%22%2B%22grains+of+sand%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    Still seems a bit guesstimatey to me though.

    Nov 10 03, 2:17 PM
    DogRL

    		Looks like the stars in the sky win by a long chalk, so someone probably did say this, how poetic. By the way, the sum of the factors for a score(20) is 42 which is the "answer to the universe..."

    Nov 10 03, 5:07 PM
    brian59

    		So there are 10 times as many stars? My brain goes fuzzy after a quadrilion! Let's hear it for exponential notation. I think the total number of particles (including photons) in the Universe is 10exp70.

    Nov 14 03, 2:12 AM
    DogRL

    		Brain, thanks and then some. As a former exponent I think I've got your number. E for MC*2.

    Nov 14 03, 7:33 AM

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