The chance of life coming from Mars is less than a million to 1

[threaded]

Better odds than the lottery then, and people seem to win that every week.

HTH

[Board Game Geek]

Do you want a debate about the Fermi Paradox or are you trolling again?

He's trolling, because the alternative is that he is incredibly subnormal, and I'm alway prepared to give people the benefit of doubt.

[gingerjedi]

There are more stars in the universe than there are grains on sand on Planet Earth (actually, that has been upgraded to there being 1000 stars per grain of sand).

And... there are more possible moves in a chess game then atoms in the universe. I have no idea if this is true but it sounds impressive.

Does that still stand given the 1000 fold upgrade?

[TimberWolf]

Only 11 votes? Are moustaches and financial armageddon more important issues to discuss and vote on than whether life exists (or existed on) another planet?

They might have had little beardy parts and an easily manipulated medium of exchange for all we know.

[EternalOptimist]

They might have had little beardy parts .

oh, you should have said. voted.

[RichardCranium]

The Interweb outputs a figure of 10^24 stars in the universe, or a cube of them with dimensions 10^8 stars per side. So if a grain of sand were 0.1 mm (smallish, but sand comes in all sorts of sizes and this is an easy size), and each grain represents a star, a box of sand representing all the stars in the universe would make a 21km sand cube. Lots of sand, but comprehensible.

21km sided cube? That's a funny number from those source numbers.

A line of 10^8 sand grains, each at 0.1mm (which is a very fine sand) is 10km long. So the cube would be 10km per side.

I think you must have been out by a factor of 10 somewhere when you did your cube root.

The quote is usually given as "grains of sand on a beach", not "grains of sand on Earth".

If the beach is a lovely 1km wide and the sand 100m deep it would have to be a huge 1000km long to contain 10^24 tightly packed particles of 0.1mm cubic size.


A conservative estimate for the number of stars is 10^22. This is 21,5000,000 stars per side when packed in a cube. (I see where your '21km' comes from now - different sources!.)

If we take a medium grain of sand as 0.5mm then the sand cube would be 10.77km per side. This allows for a beach to be 1km wide, 100m deep and 12,500 km long!

[TimberWolf]

21km sided cube? That's a funny number from those source numbers.

A line of 10^8 sand grains, each at 0.1mm (which is a very fine sand) is 10km long. So the cube would be 10km per side.

I think you must have been out by a factor of 10 somewhere when you did your cube root.

The quote is usually given as "grains of sand on a beach", not "grains of sand on Earth".

If the beach is a lovely 1km wide and the sand 100m deep it would have to be a huge 1000km long to contain 10^24 tightly packed particles of 0.1mm cubic size.


A conservative estimate for the number of stars is 10^22. This is 21,5000,000 stars per side when packed in a cube. (I see where your '21km' comes from now - different sources!.)

If we take a medium grain of sand as 0.5mm then the sand cube would be 10.77km per side. This allows for a beach to be 1km wide, 100m deep and 12,500 km long!

Correct. I lost a power of 10 somewhere, I could either blame a sticky '0' key on my not oft used calculator, or more embarrassingly ascribe it to my pressing the EXP key instead of power. But as you say, it should be 10km cubed with my numbers. I prefer the 10^24 figure, as an upper bound is IMO more likely to be the more accurate. The important thing though, IMO, is that saying 'so many beaches of sand etc' is pretty meaningless and if anything makes it harder to conceptualise than the original number, but once you put that huge number in terms of a cube of sand, rather than beaches of unknown dimensions and numbers etc, it can be visualised. Just a 10km cube of sand. And a little more if the sand particles are larger.

If the beach is a lovely 1km wide and the sand 100m deep it would have to be a huge 1000km long to contain 10^24 tightly packed particles of 0.1mm cubic size.

You've lost a power of 10 there too

[DimPrawn]

21km sided cube? That's a funny number from those source numbers.

A line of 10^8 sand grains, each at 0.1mm (which is a very fine sand) is 10km long. So the cube would be 10km per side.

I think you must have been out by a factor of 10 somewhere when you did your cube root.

The quote is usually given as "grains of sand on a beach", not "grains of sand on Earth".

If the beach is a lovely 1km wide and the sand 100m deep it would have to be a huge 1000km long to contain 10^24 tightly packed particles of 0.1mm cubic size.


A conservative estimate for the number of stars is 10^22. This is 21,5000,000 stars per side when packed in a cube. (I see where your '21km' comes from now - different sources!.)

If we take a medium grain of sand as 0.5mm then the sand cube would be 10.77km per side. This allows for a beach to be 1km wide, 100m deep and 12,500 km long!

You're the bloke that comes over and talks to me at parties and I claim my 500 yawns.

[Sysman]

If we take a medium grain of sand as 0.5mm then the sand cube would be 10.77km per side. This allows for a beach to be 1km wide, 100m deep and 12,500 km long!

But the burning question is

1. Does the beach have any decent bars?
2. Is it popular with the laydeez?

[RichardCranium]

You're the bloke that comes over and talks to me at parties and I claim my 500 yawns.

And when were you last invited to a party ... that didn't include Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs?