Board 8 > Are there more grains of sand or stars?

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I reckon stars is going to be the overwhelming winner. But to clarify, grains of sand includes all beaches on earth, all desert sand, and all the sand in the bottom of the oceans. It does not include dust or debris from rocks and such. Earth only.

I imagine the main argument for voting stars is thinking that the universe is infinite or ever-expanding. Even so, many stars that we see are actually dead, so its important to keep in mind that stars arent immortal when coming up with an answer.

Id like to hear arguments supporting grains of sand.

If stars are considered near infinite, as are planets surrounding them that potentially have sand.

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Does it include sand on other planets?


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Earth only.

Just one "beach" probably has trillions of grains of sand. I googled the estimate of sand grain count, and 1 quadrillion seems a bit low. I mean, one estimate suggests there's at least a quintillion bugs on the planet (the estimate might be high), and I'm sure there are more grains of sand than there are bugs! But even counting all the beaches, deserts, and the bottoms of the ocean I would think there are more stars.

But if we were to count all microscopic organisms on the earth, then I think that they would outnumber the stars.

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I think the rough math puts stars at several orders of magnitude higher.

Even if you say that some stars we see are dead, that just means there's stars that have been born but the light hasn't reached us yet.

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I think it comes down to whether the universe is finite.

Wow this topic is deep

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Stars. Not quite as one sided as one might think, but stars apparently has this by all scientific estimations that I am seeing.

I wonder if this holds true if we consider things from a temporal standpoint. Are there more stars that will ever be or ever have been than there are grains of sand that ever were or will ever be on Earth?

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Moonroof posted...

I think it comes down to whether the universe is finite.

My answer WAS if the universe was finite.

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Aecioo posted...

Wow this topic is deep

What if the universe is just a beach and the stars are just sand on some planet.

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Whoa, what if the entire galaxy is inside a single grain of sand??

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what if the entire galaxy is sand and we just don't know we are also sand

I feel basically every star is probably circled by at least one grain of sand

so sand has it for me

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Apparently science says there are 70 thousand million million million stars, and only roughly eight quadrillion grains of sand. So stars takes it.

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Moonroof posted...

I think it comes down to whether the universe is finite.

Even only counting the universe that is visible to us, the answer is stars by many orders of magnitude.

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Only our immediate and neighboring solar systems are hard coded in, the rest of the universe is procedurally generated

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What if every grain of sand is actually a star and the beach is a tiny universe?

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Dancedreamer posted...

Apparently science says there are 70 thousand million million million stars, and only roughly eight quadrillion grains of sand. So stars takes it.

Why didn't you just say 70 septillion?

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Earth only?

Stars, and it isnt particularly closer. Closer than most would think, but still not that close.

Astronomy suggests there's roughly 10000 stars per grain of sand. So yeah, not close.

Stars in the universe vs sand in the universe, sand takes it I reckon

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FL81 posted...

Only our immediate and neighboring solar systems are hard coded in, the rest of the universe is procedurally generated

I believe I read somewhere that the most amount of stars visible to the human eye on earth at any given location is at most 9,000. But if you were to pick up a fistful of sand, you wouldnt be able to count all the grains.

Moonroof posted...

I believe I read somewhere that the most amount of stars visible to the human eye on earth at any given location is at most 9,000. But if you were to pick up a fistful of sand, you wouldnt be able to count all the grains.

Wow so deep

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Aeicoo?

FL81 posted...

Only our immediate and neighboring solar systems are hard coded in, the rest of the universe is procedurally generated

I buy it
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Drakeryn posted...

I buy it

it explains rendering errors like the Bullet Cluster and floating point calculation errors like Galactic rotation curve anomalies, and there's probably a bug in there that explains dark energy. cosmology is solved

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