Built on Facts

Are there more stars in the universe or atoms in a cup of coffee?

There’s a lot of stars in the universe, but then again atoms are really tiny. As it turns out, there’s very roughly about 100 billion billion stars in the observable universe. In scientific notation, that’s about 10²² stars. It’s a pretty unimaginably huge number.

A coffee cup with 8 ounces of coffee in it will contain very roughly 7 x 10²⁴ water molecules, by my back-of-the-envelope math. Each molecule of water will of course have 3 atoms: 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. So despite the incredibly large number of stars, there is actually a significantly greater number of atoms in a lowly cup of joe. Something to think about during your next caffeine fix!