&

“…about 40 supernovae are exploding somewhere in the universe every second. However, light from most of these events won’t reach Earth for billions of years, if ever.”
- Page 73, “Ask Astro” column in ‘Astronomy’ magazine October 2008.

But still :

“If you put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, that cathedral will be more densely packed with grains of sand than stars are found apart in space.”
- Page 28, ‘Skywatching’, David H. Levy, Ken Fin Books, 1995.

***

Just on the off-chance that somebody is still reading this & is interested.

Depending on who’s making the estimates, it’s usually stated that the number of stars is comparable to the number of grains of sand on every beach (deserts excluded). When you throw the deserts in, it’s harder to get a number that’s similar to the estimates for the number of stars.

‘The War of the Worlds’ is one of my favourite novels – I’ve got a copy of my own too but I did first learn about it via audio tape cassette version of the Jeff Wayne’s Musical version back in high school.

OT, I’m afraid, but as an alumni of Iowa State University I am compelled to point out that Univac (founded by Eckert and Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC computer) did NOT build the first electronic computers! By a 1973 ruling of a U.S. District judge, that honor belongs to John Atanasoff and Cliff Berry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff–Berry_Computer

Said ruling stated that “ENIAC derived many basic ideas from the Atanasoff–Berry Computer” and “Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff.”

As someone whose grad student office sat adjacent to the damp corner of the physics building basement where the ABC once stood (hallowed ground for computer geeks), I had to represent, yo!

@ #5 MTU: “Buffy”??? Surely you meant “Xena”.

Oops! Er .. yes. I did indeed.

Although there is also an ice dwarf planet nick-named ‘Buffy’ too :

****

“Buffy” or 2004 XR190 – the ice dwarf with the most “tilted” or highly inclined object travelling more “up & down” than “left to right” with its inclination of 47 degrees – but in an unusually circular orbit. A scattered or detached disk object discovered in Dec. 2004 “Buffy” is the 6th most distant object so far known after Eris, Sedna and some unnamed TNO’s with an orbital range of 52 -62 AU currently its about 58 AU from our Sun.

Source : Wikipedia, various old astronomy magazine news items.

***

@18. Neil Haggath Says:

#5 MTU: Unfortunately, many star names are a lot less “romantic”, when you consider their translations – especially the Arabic ones, which are often just descriptions of their positions in the constellation figures. e.g. Betelgeuse means “The giant’s armpit”!

I know – although they still sound good. Also, I gather the names have evolved and “been corrupted” chinese whisper style over time so literal meanings they aren’t really anymore.

@21. Bipedal Tetrapod :

One phrase that springs to mind here is the evocative line from the HG Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ or at least the musical version of it :

” .. like all the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

The number of those would be, well, astronomical!