Number of stars in universe may be vastly larger than thought

[n2doc]

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times
December 1, 2010|6:14 p.m.




Here's a finding that may make some stargazers do a double-take through their telescopes: There may be three times as many stars in the universe as we thought. Fixing this astronomical miscalculation may force some researchers to reconsider what far-off galaxies really look like and how the stars within them came to be.

"It has terrifying implications for a lot of the astronomy we do," said Caltech astronomer Richard Ellis, who was not involved in the work.

Previous star counts relied on the assumption that the larger universe looks much like our galaxy. But authors of a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature say that there are many more red dwarfs — small, dim stars that can't be picked out individually when very far off — in certain other galaxies than in the Milky Way.


The new census, based on analysis of the light signature of the galaxies using instruments at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, pushes the total number of stars in the universe to 300 sextillion (that's 100 billion squared, multiplied by 30).

more

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-stars-20101202,0,6202786.story

[lumpy]

1. You mean there are more than "billions and billions" ?

v

[snagglepuss]

2. Beyond boggling. nt

[14thColony]

3. Uh oh...

Dark Matter just got a little less necessary. Is this the first step on the path to Dark Matter becoming the Luminiferous Ether of the 21st century?

[laconicsax]

4. Probably not.

Observable matter (stars 'n' stuff) only makes up about 20% of the matter in the universe with dark matter accounting for the remaining 80%.

Since red dwarfs are tiny (less than half the size of our small sun), it would take a whole lot more than three times as many to make up the difference.

Just my non-expert opinion.

[14thColony]

6. No doubt you're right

It's just that I've harboured doubts about DM for a long time. I'd like to see MOND disproved first, and I think some recent galactic surveys have tended to support MOND over DM.

[laconicsax]

5. Comment at the link:

This is very interesting. Here we sit distroying [sic] our own star, gazing out and wondering about other's we will never see....

Huh? Does anyone know how we're "distroying" the sun?

[krispos42]

7. Global warming... we're overheating the sun by using solar panels.

:crazy:

[Thor_MN]

8. No doubt that some amount of right wing hate radio and Faux news reaches the sun....