LOS ANGELES — There may be three times as many stars in the universe as we thought. Fixing this astronomical miscalculation may force some researchers to reconsider what far-off galaxies really look like and how the stars within them came to be.
“It has terrifying implications for a lot of the astronomy we do,” said Caltech astronomer Richard Ellis, who was not involved in the work.
Previous star counts relied on the assumption that the larger universe looks much like our galaxy. But authors of a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature say there are many more red dwarfs — small, dim stars that can’t be picked out individually when very far off — in certain other galaxies than in the Milky Way.
The new census, based on analysis of the light signature of the galaxies using instruments at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, pushes the total number of stars in the universe to 300 sextillion (that’s 100 billion squared, multiplied by 30).
