Stars 
We cannot see very many stars from where we stand. This makes it difficult to comprehend how many stars there really are. That is: How many suns actually exist? And remember, each sun has the potential of supporting many planets.

 
If you stand on the clearest and starriest of nights in a remote pasture in Wyoming (away from city lights) all the stars you can see with the naked eye will total less than three thousand. Is it any wonder we have difficulty comprehending the existence of billions and trillions of stars? And many of those stars are in fact entire galaxies each consisting of at least a billion stars. Many contain trillions of stars.

Get a Telescope 
Modern telescopes confirm that there are well over ten billion galaxies, each consisting of untold billions of stars. Galaxies are so big that each is considered to be an island universe unto itself. Even the largest telescopes can detect less than one tenth of 1 percent of our own galaxy's trillion stars.

 
A telescope doesn't just magnify items. It gathers light as well. This allows you to see more stars; for example, just looking at the same section of sky through a telescope will allow you to see ten times more stars than if you were just looking with the naked eye. Instead of three thousand, you could see and count thirty thousand!

 
Adding a camera and film lets the observer gather and store light. Using a camera and film allows you to record and store millions of stars. The retina in your eye can't do this, that's why you can't see all the stars that are really there with the naked eye.

Life on Other Planets 
Our everyday assumption that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, until proven otherwise, stems partly from the small and limited number of stars we can actually see when we look up at night. Statistically, if the universe consisted only of the stars we can see, there would be a chance we were the only folks in town. However, when we look at the staggering, true numbers of stars, it is logically and statistically impossible that there is no other life as intelligent as ours. If only one planetary system in a billion has intelligent life, then thousands of such worlds are hidden in any one galaxy alone.

A Single Grain of Sand 
Take a trip to the beach, if you have one nearby. If not, just go stand in a sandbox at any playground. Take a magnifying glass with you. Reach down and pick up a handful of sand. Now, sift it in your hand until you have only a single grain in your fingers. Look at the grain of sand through the magnifying glass. Look at the facets in that grain of sand. It's a magnificent piece of nature, like a masterfully cut diamond.

Now make this assumption: This is the only grain of sand in the world that has a structure like this. All the other grains of sand in the world are plain, with no distinguishing characteristics. Does that make sense? It's a ridiculous assumption, isn't it?

 
Well, that's what modern scientists have done with our planet. They operate from the basic assumption that we are the only planet with life on it until proven otherwise; that all the other stars and planets in the universe are plain, no distinguishing characteristics, no life. This is even more ridiculous than the grain-of-sand assumption. I repeat: Does this make any sense?

The Numbers 
While you're at the beach or in the sandbox, contemplate this: There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on our entire planet! Scientists estimate that in our galaxy alone (the Milky Way) there are over 100 billion stars (suns).

Million vs. Billion 
The words "million" and "billion" sound alike. People throw both words around and use them interchangeably as if they were close to each other or related to one another. They are not. There is a huge difference between a million and a billion. Here is one way to look at it:

 
If you have a million dollars, you can spend a thousand dollars a day for about three and a half years. But, if you have a billion dollars you can spend a thousand dollars a day for over two thousand years!

A Different Way to Look at the Possibilities 
If our solar system is average, and right now scientists believe that it is, then most solar systems have about ten planets.That means our galaxy has a thousand billion planets. Just our galaxy.

 
If only one planet out of thousand has life on it, then our galaxy alone has one billion planets with life on them!  If only one out every thousand of these life-bearing planets has intelligent life, such as our planet, then there are one million planets like ours with intelligent life, just in our galaxy alone.

 If we make the assumption that humans represent an average rate of development, then half the planets (500,000) would be less developed than we are and half them (500,000) would be more advanced.

In 1943 during World War II the United States built ten thousand airplanes. Thirty years later we were in space. We accomplished both feats with technology that was less than a hundred years old.

 
* This means 500,000 inhabited planets more advanced than we are, combined, could have built five billion spacecraft in a single year! 

 
This graphic shows the comparative size of earth's sun. Our sun is the small dot on the blue field above.

The Size of Stars 
The size of a star can vary dramatically. There are very tiny stars the size of an asteroid, and there are huge stars. Some stars are so large that 25 billion Planet Earths could fit inside one of them.