How long would it take to count all the stars in the entire universe?

Answer 1

There are a lot of stars in the universe. Our Galaxy alone is thought to contain 400 billion stars. If you can count 2 stars a second continuously without sleep it would take 200 billion seconds or 6337 years 225 days 13 hours 33 minutes and 20 seconds.

Add to that the fact that there is thought to be about 400 billion galaxies in our universe. Our Galaxy is large by galaxy standards but let us assume that the average number of stars in any given galaxy is 100 billion. So at 2 a second it would take 633.7 trillion years or to put it into perspective 46,154.4 times longer than the universe has thought to existed.

Answer 2

It would be practically impossible to count all the stars in the entire universe. There are estimated to be around 100 billion galaxies, each containing billions or even trillions of stars. Even if you could count one star per second, it would take an incomprehensibly long time to count them all.

Answer 3

It takes light about 80,000 years to do so. At the speed of the fastest spacecraft yet built by humans, it would take approximately the same time as the current age of the universe to cross the Milky Way.

However, speeds tend to increase greatly as technology improves. 200 years ago, the fastest vehicle on Earth could go about 40 miles per hour; that was a train. 100 years ago, the fastest vehicle was a race car, at about 150 MPH. Today, the space shuttle gets up to about 18,000 MPH getting into orbit. How fast will spacecraft go, 100 years from now? There's no way to guess.

Answer 4

Answer 1: With our current technology, it would be impossible. It could not be done. One of the reasons is that scientists believe that there is a super-massive black hole in the middle of the Milky Way, and probably at the centers of most large galaxies.

Answer 2: Actually, solar sails could probably propel a spacecraft across the galaxy, using solar winds from different stars to accelerate it. It would take an extremely long amount of time, however, probably more than a thousand years.

Answer 3: Solar sails would be interminably slow. It takes our sun 220 million years to orbit the galaxy, so about 110 million years to get from one side to the other. Solar sails could reduce that time. πd = 110,000,000, so d=35 million years, at the sun's speed. That time would be reduced by accelerating towards the Milky Way's massive central black hole. What we gain passing it in time we don't lose on the other side. Clearly, one would simply fly around the little hole, instead of navigating through it. It is smaller in volume than most stars.

A ram scoop, funneling interstellar hydrogen into some sort of fusion engine, could conceivably get you across the Milky Way in much less time yet--possibly as little as a couple hundred thousand years.

Answer 5

That would depend on the speed of your spacecraft. Current human spacecraft would take approximately the current age of the universe to get out of the Milky Way. That's my way of saying "It couldn't be done.".

However, the invention of the aircraft happened only 107 years ago, and we will certainly make equal advances in the next 100 years, and the next... By the year 2500, we may have spacecraft that would be able to exit the Milky Way at near lightspeed, taking "only" about 13,000 years to the galactic rim.

Answer 6

If you counted one star every second, you would still be counting after 12,675 years.

So I suggest you don't start to try!!

Answer 7

That would depend upon the speed of travel.

Answer 8

If you are going across it I think that it would take 100,000 light-years to get to the other side of the Milky Way

Answer 9

That would obviously depend on the speed. At the speed of light, it would take about 100,000 years, since the diameter of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years.

Answer 10

80,000 YEARS