Agree or disagree? "there are more stars in the universe than there are particles of sand on earth"?

Question

I remember hearing the above statement from somewhere...

...i just forget where... but what id like to know is:

first off, do you agree or not?

and second, is such a statement accurate? Would it be alright to say that? Why or Why Not?

Thx 4 taking the time to answer ^^

Answer 1

i think that statement was from Cosmos, book and documentary series by the late Carl Sagan.

and yes i agree, the stars you see in the sky is but a vary small fraction of whats out there. in fact the Hubble took a ten day exposure of what was thought to be empty space, and it was found that even though we couldn't normally see anything in that area, if we actually look there are tons of galaxies in that direction, its just that the light is so vary faint.

Answer 2

There are approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe (we haven't yet determined the universe's *exact* size, but ten septillion stars [10^22] is almost certainly accurate within a couple orders of magnitude at most).

How many grains of sand are there on Earth?  I don't know offhand, but if someone wants to do a really quick and ugly estimate (or a slow and pretty one), I would wager that it is not quite as many as there are stars out there.

Answer 3

Absolutely not, and I can prove it.  It always amazes me how many people just make this claim and not one of them actually tries to do the math.

The estimate arrived at by the IAU in their convention in Australia, is that there are about 7 x 10^22 stars in the observable universe.

Assume a grain of sand to be about 1/100 of an inch. So a cubic inch is about a million.  A cubic foot is 1,728,000,000. (1.7 x 10^9). A square mile of sand on the Sahara Desert, 20 feet deep would be 20 x 5280 x 5280 x 1.7 x 10*9.  That's 9.6 x 10^17 grains. A square, 270 miles on a side would be 7 x 10^22 grains.

So this represents only a small fraction of the sand in the Sahara Desert. I do not believe the universe is infinite and I think that notion was widely abandoned with the discovery of the Big Bang.  The universe may include more than we can observe and it may not.  There is no reason to believe it is much larger unless you go along with the utterly unsupported claims that it expanded faster than the speed of light at some time in the past.  So say the universe is a hundred times bigger than our observable limits.  That is still not as much sand as there is in the Sahara Desert.  The desert is 3.5 million sq. miles and averages 200 feet deep in sand. That's 480 times the amount I used here, as equivalent to the number of stars in the observable universe.

And of course, there's a lot more sand on earth than just the Sahara Desert.

So for those of you who didn't do the math, there are FAR more grains of sand on earth than there are stars in the most generous estimates of the population of the universe. QED.

Edit: Carl Sagan said "more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches...". That's a tiny fraction of the sand on earth, which is what the questioner asked.  Of course, this estimate using beaches is next to impossible to make, so I'm sure he didn't do the math on that one. Where does the beach end as you go farther from the shore?  How deep are you counting?  He also did not have the data we have today on the possible number of stars.

Whoever down-thumbed me, I'm looking for your proof to the contrary.  I don't see it.  Post it.  I want to see your work.  I'll come back later and look again, eager to see your refutation.

Answer 4

Your question is extremely difficult to answer because I have no idea how many particles of sand there are on the Earth. I know there are lots of them, but that is about it...Worse I have no way to calculate or estimate how large a number that is because of the missing depth factor in any calculation of cubic feet or cubic meters wherein one might say there are 35,000,000 (or something) grains of sand in a cubic foot of sand, for example. Conceiveably one might be able to get an approximation of the length and width of sand covered areas, but there is no real way to get the depth numbers...

Stars...

In the Milky Way Galaxy there are more than 200 Billion stars. Outside of the Milky Way there are thousands and thousands and thousands of other galaxies and each one of them can have billions of stars within it also. So on the "Star" side of your question we also have some faily huge unknowns to look at and agree that we cannot possibly know the total number of them.

I recommend that you look at the statement and nod your head in semi agreement saying, "you may be right." That will get you off of the hook.    

Answer 5

nope... i dont agree. Brant seems to have presented a very good calculation, and a BRAVO to him. speaking of micheal's 'faster than light expansion of universe', i dont agree. for an object travelling faster than light, time actually STOPS. so virtually, its impossible to travel faster than light.

however, it is not only difficult, but impossible to answer that question, because the actual number of stars in the universe is unknown.

Answer 6

The musing by Glen Mackie of Swinburne University in Australia (admittedly nearly 10 years old now) does suggest that the phrase is correct.

Answer 7

it's about right - both numbers can only be estimated, so it's impossible to say for certain. I think it's interesting to note that it's also about the same as the number of molecules in a glass of water. I doubt that the point of the statement is that it's definitely true... it's just to provoke you to think about how extremely huge the number really is.

Answer 8

Michael that was really dumb...

Faster than the speed of light!!!  How could you be so FOOOLISH.

Every school boy knows that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

Rest of your answer has been copied from http://www.astronomy.com

Do you really understand what flat geometry or inflation theory is in the first place???

Try being original and stick to the pointl!!!

Answer 9

i dont think soo... theres ALOT of sand... =]

Answer 10

I did the math once, estimating the size if a sand grain as 1mm, calculating how many were in a cubic meter, guessing what % of Earth is covered by sand and how deep, etc.. Then assuming an average of a billion stars per galaxy and I can't recall how many billion galaxies. But really, both numbers are just estimates. As I recall the two numbers I got were similar. It could go either way depending on how you estimated.  

Answer 11

That statement is from the bible. There a definite more stars in the 'universe' than particles of sand in the earth, you've got to realize how big the universe is, its too big for us to even estimate.  

Answer 12

Carl Sagan said that on the TV show Cosmos.  I would tend to agree with him too.  Our own galaxy has probably a trillion stars and the universe is full of trillions of galaxies in every direction we look, each also holding their own collections of stars.  Space is huge!  That's a lot of stars!  Probably more then grains of sand on the earth.

Answer 13

In response to Brant, the theory that the universe expanded faster than light during its first few moments is NOT "utterly unsupported" at all, far from it. It has been the predominant concept in cosmology for the last few decades.

Alan Guth's theory has also been verified by results from the WMAP satellite, which indicate a flat geometry to the universe - this is a prediction of Inflation Theory. In other words, the implication of inflation theory is that the Actual Universe is far, far bigger than the observable universe. Mind boggling big. Our observable portion might be like comparing a proton to the size of the observable universe. In such a vast cosmos, there must be a staggeringly large number of stars. Far more than even the grains of sand on Earth.

Answer 14

The statement comes from a biblical passage I believe.

The number of grains of sand on Earth is finite - its a huge number but not infinite.

The number of stars is thought to be infinite - there are likely an infinite number of galaxies (we can see about 100 billion or so, but its estimated the number of galaxies in the entire universe is actually infinite).

Infinite is always greater than finite (regardless of how large that finite number is).

Answer 15

It's not a testable hypothesis.  But I would agree.  From our understanding of the cosmos, it is much closer to infinite than most human minds can comprehend.  

"Almost infinite" is greater than "discernably finite"

Answer 16

Assuming that the Universe is growing, then there isn't an infinite number of stars in the Universe. There isn't enough room, especially if the Universe stops growing. Then look at sand. Earth is gigantic and mostly covered with water. There is sand on the beaches and underwater.

So I'd have to say that there are more grains of sand. Sand is minuscule. Stars are, well, stars and are huge. So there has to be more sand then stars.

Answer 17

I did the estimate once, using some reasonable number of stars in the average galaxy and some conventionally wise choice for the number of galaxies, then I figured that there were as many grains of sand in 500 cubic kilometers of sand as there were stars in the universe. There's about the same number of atoms of air in a dry two liter cola bottle.

Answer 18

I did the calculation some time ago assuming sand covering the land masses of the Earth to a depth of 10 feet.  I believe the number was comparable to the numbers of stars.  I believe I used a sand particle size of 0.5 mm.

Answer 19

I think it is accurate. if u think about it, the universe is near infinite in size therefor there must be a near infinite number of stars in the universe. i would also think it would be ok to say all considering people have been saying it for years.

Answer 20

More stars than grains of sand.

Some think that the Universe (not just the visible Universe) is infinite in size.  That means that there are infinitely more stars than grains of sand on the Earth - as the Earth has a finite number of grains of sand.

But there are also more stars, about 10^23, in the visible Universe, which is more than we have grains of sand here.