How many solar systems are there in the universe?

Answer 1

The universe may be infinite in size, or it may be of only finite size. Doesn't the universe have to be infinite? It doesn't make any sense that it would be finite, then there would be some end or edge, and what would be beyond that?

Strange as it may seem, the universe could be finite, a finite universe would not have to have any edges or an end, it could 'wraparound'. The universe could be curved. Huh? How could you curve the universe?

An analogy should help, consider the surface of the Earth. It looks flat and many children and ancient people might assume that it is flat and that it is either infinite or must have an end or edge somewhere.

But the Earth's surface is curved, it wraps around and closes in on itself. There is only a finite amount of area yet there is no ends or edges. The two-dimensional flat surface of the Earth is wrapped around into a sphere when viewed in three dimensions. If you set out flying westward in a plane, you will wraparound and eventually return to where you started, approaching from the east.

The universe may be a curved three-dimensional space that wraps around and closes on itself. If you set out in a spacecraft heading one direction, you could eventually return to the same spot from the opposite direction.



A nice demonstration of the scale of the universe is to start with a view showing our galaxy and then zoom by a factor of ten once per second. Such a demonstration is done at http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

Click on this link and view the demo. Use your browser's Back button to return to this page after watching the demo.


The entire universe, or just the visible portion of the universe if its infinite, is roughly 27 billion light-years across. That's 159,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. Our solar system, from the Sun to Pluto, is .00063 light-years across or 3,720,000,000 miles. That makes our solar system 42,700,000,000,000 times smaller than the whole universe.

Can we put that into a more meaningful perspective? If the entire Earth's surface represents the whole universe, the solar system on that scale would be one-millionth of a meter wide, about 1/25,000 of an inch, the size of a single, small bacteria.

Answer 2

Fillblank is indeed off by a few orders of magnitude.

There are about 100 billion (10^11) stars in our galaxy. I guess maybe 1 in 10 stars has planets, although not necessarily habitable ones. So that's about 10 billion or 10^10 solar systems in our galaxy.

While it is reasonable to talk about planets and extraterrestrial life in our own galaxy, there's not much point in wondering about life in the universe outside the Milky Way. That being said, there are mabye 100 billion galaxies in the universe.

Answer 3

As of right now, something like 200 planets have been found orbiting distant stars. There are then at least 200 other solar systems, but the actual number must be much higher for the entire universe.

Answer 4

a few quadrillion galaxies or 1,000,000,000,000,000. break it down some more, and another quadrillion solar systems within one galaxy or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
solar systems.

These are just estimates keep in mind and may be off several or many or hugely off, orders of magnitude. We haven't actually counted them all yet.

The limits of the universe are known. Telescopes have peered to the very edge of the universe. It is infinitely expanding.

The universe is also in constant formation at the edges. And the edges aren't really edges, they are permutations of space-time as represented by Kalabi-Yau spaces.(google it).

there is still debate over the edge versus no edge but space-time is central in any case and string theory might explain the infinity within a atom and the infinity of the universe as we know it.

Answer 5

How many solar systems are there in the universe?
Answer:
Actually, there are hundreds of billions. There are more stars than we even know of, and if even a fraction of these stars are the centers of their own solar systems, there are too many to count!

Answer 6

there r many systems in universe but thers only 1 solar syastem nd dats ours

Answer 7

Everyone else who answered to this question is correct.. However..

We can try to understand how big the universe is... We have many...We live in the Milky Way.. Way too much to count..

Answer 8

Check with NASA, seems that the count of discovered planets orbiting other stars up to about 100 now.

Answer 9

There are fillions and fillions of solar systems in the universe.

Answer 10

solar system? only one.
star systems? statistically high in numbers.
millions in our galaxy alone.