jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It seems that our universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, and that imposes several restrictions on us. If we were able to travel a certain distance from earth, we would never be able to return because of the rapid expansion. Also, distant light will never reach us because it is moving away from us too fast.

When the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy collide in millions of years, not one of the billions of stars will collide with another. A spaceship traveling at the speed of light could travel indefinitely in a straight line and not crash into anything. These are two results of the universe being incomprehensively large.

Unrelated, but interesting:
When you shuffle a deck of cards, you will get a result that has never been gotten before.
There are more trees on earth than stars in the universe.

This guy is interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FxTgaHnbXE

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Yeah - but his reference to the “galaxy” is actually the Milky Way Galaxy, not the universe. The universe is made up of many galaxies and there is no known count of stars in the “universe"

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

I’m sure I don’t believe the statement about the number of trees outnumbering the stars in the universe. We don’t know how many stars there are in the universe so the statement is someone’s opinion. I do believe that there are most likely more stars in the universe than there are square inches of land on Earth, the minimum amount of area assumed to be needed to seed a tree.

Stan

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I've heard numerous times there are more stars out there than grains of sand on earth. When I hear this crap I always wonder who did all this counting?
Same with distances. A million billion light years away...Some of these numbers thrown around are hard to believe, even if true, and again, who did all the counting? The new James Web Telescope seems to be showing lot's of the past "counters" were in fact, wrong.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

I do remember reading years ago in Steven Hawking’s book “A History of Time” that he wrote “there are 150 billion stars in our galaxy, and 150 billion galaxies in our universe.”
Hard to believe we have that many trees, Jerry!

srg

Thanks for that very interesting link Jerry.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

The area of the Earth is ~330 trillion sq. inches. Some galaxies have at least a trillion stars and there are billions, if not trillions, of galaxies so the earth has far less trees, assuming one tree per sq. inch, than stars in the universe.

bwa

Toment Loc: FL, IL

👍👍👍

Stephan G

With this talk, I was reminded of an old joke. "Why do you keep stretching out your arms further when you talk about the fish that got away from you?" "No one has caught it yet."

Often imaginary numbers are used to indicate the imaginary number when an finite number is useless. We still have not reach Dennis the Menace's "Gadzillion".

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Search for “there are more trees on earth than stars in the galaxy” and you will get the info - here is one of the reports:

According to a study published in the journal “Nature,” there are approximately 3.04 trillion trees on our planet. That’s an astonishing number, considering that the Milky Way galaxy, which is just one of billions in the universe, contains an estimated 100 to 300 billion stars. In comparison, the number of trees on earth is several orders of magnitude higher.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

Then somebody can’t count. Last time I checked a trillion is only a thousand billion. The estimated 100 billion to 300 billion stars is per Galaxy, and their are billions of Galaxies in the universe.

whatdat Loc: Del Valle, Tx.

Numbers don’t seem to add up. If there are billions of galaxies in the universe each with 200-300 billon stars, I think the math will come out to man more times stars out there than trees on Earth. Pretty sure that 1 quintrillion is more then 3.04 trillion

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Well, I just drove to the store, and I must have passed a million trees. They are large and small, just a few feet away from each other. I don't have a horse in this race, but it is an interesting idea. People get ideas stuck in their heads, and it's hard to get them to think differently. I heard something about the number of atoms in the universe and a number that is bigger.

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Yes, you are correct. But in the video, the speaker references the M8 galaxy, not the universe.
This is just the section that discusses Stars vs Trees

https://youtu.be/8FxTgaHnbXE?t=1422&si=qSNBFNH7C8tbvehU

Transcript:
Which do you think is greater, the number of stars in the galaxy or the number of trees on Earth?
It's a bit of a strange question, but most people believe there's an obvious answer. The M8 Galaxy is over a 100,000 light years wide and a thousand light years tall and Earth, is just Earth. Surely there must be more stars than trees, right? That's the more commonly guessed of the two answers but it turns out that's incorrect. At least we're pretty sure it's incorrect. According to our best estimates, there are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy while there are three trillion trees here on Earth. Of course these are just estimates using sample sizes and extrapolation and whatnot. Nobody has time to sit down and count every star or tree so it's certainly possible the numbers are a little off. However, since the estimates state that there is an order of magnitude more trees than Stars, it's unlikely that the margin of error in the estimates would swing the numbers back in the favor of stars.

So based on that - I interpret the conversation to be about trees vs a single galaxy.