Many scholars in our history have tried to find out the number of stars in the universe, but all have failed. However, two American astronomers, Pieter van Dokkum (from Yale University) and Charlie Conroy (from Princeton University), have taken advantage of the technology at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to count the number of stars in elliptical galaxies.

They have studied eight ancient elliptical galaxies, that is, those that originated very early in the history of the universe and are 50 to 300 million light-years away from us. The findings were published in the journal Nature in early December.

There are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and researchers have indicated a five- to ten-fold increase in the elliptical galaxies studied. In addition to these, there are almost untouchable red dwarfs that contain 10% or 20% of the mass of the sun; the number of them can be up to twenty times that of the stars of our galaxy. This statement can be accompanied by the following: if there are more stars, the planets will also be more numerous, and the chances of the existence of planets similar to our Earth will also be greater.