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answers:
John say: The estimated number of stars in the universe is 10^44 i.e. 1 followed by 44 0s
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Poseidon say: Hi Tootsie Roll,
I can assure you that there are many, MANY more that 100 billion stars in the universe. There are at least 200 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
In the universe there are trillions, possibly quadrillions of stars and orbiting them are quintillions of planets.
Scientists have already managed to see right up to the current edge of the universe with the help of the Hubble telescope so they are very aware of how totally gigantic the universe is. The edge of the universe is 46.5 billion light years from planet Earth. Quite a long walk.
Poseidon
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Sciencenut say: I once heard a story about a tour guide at the New York Museum of Natural History. Someone asked the tour guide, "How old is the T.Rex skeleton?" The tour guide replied, "72Million and 14 years old." Then the person said, "Wow. How do you know the age so precisely?" The tour guide replied, "Well, when I first started working here they told me that it was 72Million years old, and I've been working here 14 years, so the current age is just simple arithmetic."
The number of stars in our Galaxy is an *estimate*, currently around 400Billion stars, give or take a few Billion.
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Larry Phischman say: There are 100 billion stars just in our galaxy. We know that through counting them, using high power telescopes and computers.
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poldi say: The 100 billion stars is one estimate of the number of stars in our galaxy, not the entire universe.
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quantumclaustrophobe say: There are a lot more than that probably in just our galaxy alone...
To calculate the approximate number in our galaxy, there's an estimate for star density at various points away from the center of our galaxy; from those estimates, they calculate the volume of our galaxy for the number of stars total. (Last estimate I've see was between 190 billion and 280 billion - but, they do change as time goes on.)