Our Expanding Universe

We now know that the Universe is expanding and accelerating. I our infinite wisdom twenty years ago we reckoned there were about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way and about 100 billion galaxies. As our ability to observe has improved with the new satellite telescopes the estimates of both the number of stars and galaxies has grown. We now believe there are about 400 billion stars in the Milky way and two trillion galaxies. Assuming our galaxy is of average size I’m not sure how to express the total number of stars in the universe numerically other than to say it is 8 followed by 23 zeros.

Since this estimate is based on the “observable” universe there is every reason that the numbers will continue to increase.

In a prior posting I expressed my thinking on how the big bang could possibly have created all of the observable matter (stars, galaxies, etc.) and keep in mind that we are not able to see “dark” matter which constitutes 95% of all matter in the universe. That is a lot of stuff to come out of a singularity.