• Question: How many planets are there in the whole universe?

    Asked by lolz81 to Phil on 17 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Phillip Wilkinson

      Phillip Wilkinson answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      Very difficult to say accurately, but we can certainly guesstimate!

      If we say that every star we see has the same amount of planets as our solar system, then there are around 2 to 3 trillion planets in our galaxy.

      Since there are around 200 billion galaxies (ish), we can say that there are around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets out there somewhere. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 if you include Earth 😛

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