[kinetic]

Ever tried to count the number of stars on a clear night?

According to a study by a team of stargazers based at the Australian National University, there are 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (70,000 million million million, or 70 sextillion) stars in the known universe.

That is about 10 times more than the grains of sand on earth.

At the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Sydney, Dr Simon Driver, who headed the team, said the number was drawn up based on a survey of one strip of sky.

Within the strip of sky some 10,000 galaxies were pinpointed and their brightness was measured to figure out how many stars they contained.

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

Two telescopes, one at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in northern New South Wales state and one in the Canary Islands, were used to carry out the survey.

According to him, it is likely that there are many more million stars, but 70 sextillion was the number visible within range of modern telescopes.

The universe is so big that light from the other end of the universe 'hasn't reached us yet', Australia's The Age newspaper quoted him as saying.

Asked if he believed there was other intelligent life out there, he said: "Seventy thousand million million million is a big number... it's inevitable."


That's a lot of stars!

[Dom]

Still think we're alone?

[DriveEuro]

Well, we're alone till we can prove others are there.

[LeanWolf]

Well, we're alone till we can prove others are there.

Err.. no, just that we can't prove it. You're saying nothing is true until it's proven.

[The_Neon_Cowboy]

um sampleing is ineffective especailly someplace as vast and varrying as space

DAMN!!! i was off... i was going for 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 starts...

[merry]

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And reolving at nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

wav (cca 400kb)

[Trunks0]

Originally posted by merry
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And reolving at nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

wav (cca 400kb)

hahahahaha

Even the rare beome commen on the right scale imho