• Question: How many galaxies are there in space?

    Asked by 867enek48 to Emma, Shane, Stephen on 16 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Stephen Rhatigan

      Stephen Rhatigan answered on 16 Nov 2017:


      We can only estimate how many galaxies there are in the Observable Universe and that estimate changes all the time as observations improve and become more accurate.
      I think the current estimate is around 2 trillion or 2,000,000,000,000 which is 10 times more than the previous best estimate which was 200 billion.
      This means that there are more stars than grains of sand on planet Earth.
      And that’s just the Observable Universe – the Universe is so huge that we can’t see all of it because light from the furthest parts hasn’t had time to reach us.

    • Photo: Emma Hanley

      Emma Hanley answered on 16 Nov 2017:


      As Stephen said scientists don’t really know and we can only estimate.

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