AIBU to question the popular belief that there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on earth?

[Tryingtryingandtrying]

How can this possibly be true? Tbh I'd question if there were more stars than grains of sand on my local beach? I've read a bit around it and still is impossible for me to comprehend. Any other facts or theories that just don't make sense to you?

I thought that the matter in the universe is finite, even if the universe itself is infinite.
Ie there is a finite (but huge) number of stars.

The fact that the universe expanding doesn't mean that the number of stars is increasing. It means that the existing stars are moving further away from each other.

If it's infinite how does that that work ? Does it just keep expanding into nothing ? I got an F in physics GCSE over 30 years ago it hurts my brain to think about it 🤣.

Pretty sure that as grains are being made, they're also disappearing as they reduce in size and ultimately dissolve into solution. So I expect that's a zero sum game.

Yes surely the universe is finite and expanding.
Time boggled my mind. Its just another dimension and we only perceive it as linear.

The universe is not infinite. We have got a bounding size for it. You just have to think about it in terms of time...light from the farthest reaches of the universe has taken 13.7 bn years to get to us. It appears that the universe is expanding. Everything is moving away from everything else - look up Hubble's Law.

@WoolieLiberal

Given the universe is infinite (which is a concept our tiny minds struggle to comprehend) but the number of grains of sand on the earth is finite, then I’m inclined to believe so.

If it’s infinite then how is it expanding? Where is it expanding from?

I got told my science teacher that there are more atoms in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in all the seas in the world. As a way of showing how small atoms are and how many there are in a glass of water.

And yes to double slit theory. Weird.

How about Young's double slit experiment performed with huge molecules...? Record was broken a few years ago using oligotetraphenylporphyrins. Shame it isn't more snappy but the formula is something beginning with C284H190 IIRC! Crackers!

Once or twice a year i give A Brief History Of Time a go.

I wont turn the page till i fully get what's being said. Every time i read it i hope to get further through the book until i'm not properly understanding. Every time it's the same point - the string theory/space doughnut bit. (about half way through! ) My brain just can't cope

(it's great bedtime reading when you can't sleep. Knocks me out good and proper)

If it's expanding.... What's it expanding in to??

Try Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli. Much shorter and easier to digest than ploughing through one book. Nicely written; he's got an Italian poetry to his prose.

The universe is not infinite. But it might as well be from our perspective. If we could get to the edge of the universe, everything that we know about space time would cease to apply. So we can’t begin to imagine what beyond our universe means. It’s quite reassuring to believe in an infinite universe as it prevents having to contemplate the unknowable.

The double slit experiment just blows my mind

@Tryingtryingandtrying

• there are more iterations of the game of chess than there are atoms in the observable universe

I. JUST. CANNOT. PROCESS. THIS.

@Tryingtryingandtrying

Is it infinite though? Is that proven?

Well, if its not infinite, what's on the other side? So yeah, it's infinite either way.

You can’t build sandcastles with stars.

We have a maximum size for the universe (defined as containing energy/matter), as BobbinThreadbare123 says, it's 13.7 billion years times the speed of light. Beyond that, the best guess is that there's nothing.

Comprehending that from a human perspective, however, is another question.

There are between 100-200 billion galaxies in the universe, and our galaxy has around 100 billion stars. No idea how many grains of sand there are though.

Sorry to be a nerd, but our solar system is roughly estimated to contain at least 70 septillion stars (that is 7 followed by 23 0's) and there is an estimated 200 billion galxies.

Sagan didn't coin this phrase as a litteral truth that it is has become through history but to highlight that space is fucking huge with multiple universes with multiple suns/planets etc. It was used as a frame of reference as to show highlight how big not only our universe is but the multiple uinverses there are and to higlight how little we can see or even study.

excuse my dyslexia and not editing properly

What's the double slit experiment?

Sounds painful...

@TinySongstress

And- nothing can travel faster than the speed of light because as an object with mass speeds up it becomes heavier, unlike a photon, and the energy expended to make it reach the speed of light would have to be infinite.

This is how my then just turned 7 year old worked put Santa wasn’t real.

@Jetatyeovilaerodrome

What's the double slit experiment?

Sounds painful...

Thank you @DicklessWonder

@00100001

If it's expanding.... What's it expanding in to??

I think it's expanding into nothingness