We Were Very Wrong About the Number of Galaxies in the Universe
Found on Gizmodo on Friday, 14 October 2016
The observable universe—that is, the part of the universe that’s visible to us on Earth—contains 10 to 20 times as many galaxies than previous estimates. That raises the total to somewhere between one and two trillion galaxies, which is up from the previous best estimate of 100 billion galaxies. Consequently, this means we also have to update the number of stars in the observable universe, which now numbers around 700 sextillion (that’s a 7 with 23 zeros behind it, or 700 thousand billion billion).
With so many more galaxies and stars, the number of planets also went up dramatically. As a direct consequence, there are more planets in the habitable zone that could have developed life similar to ours. Based on this vast amount it is safe to assume that we are not the only one.