How many solar systems are there in our universe?
Question:
Answer:
From one to billions.
Well, theres hundreds of billions of them in the milky way galaxy alone, which itself is one of hundreds of billions of other galaxies! And since galaxys range in size from a couple dozen million stars to trillions of stars, the number of stars (and number of systems) is virtually inconceviable!
there is only one
A galaxy could average 100 billions stars, and there could be up to 500 billion galaxies in the universe. Even assuming that only 1 out of 10 stars will have planets around and thus be a solar system, the number would thus in the order of 5E21.
We now know of more than two hundred solar systems beyond our own. All of these are located within our own galaxy.
It is very probable, based upon what we have discovered, that most stars are orbitted by planets--even binary stars. This would imply that our galaxy has more than 100 billion solar systems.
Beyond our galaxy are another hundred billion galaxies. It is possible solar systems in globular clusters might be more rare than around stars in spiral galaxies, so this would reduce the number of solar systems in the universe. But that is not known.
More Questions & Answers...