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To: Zon
There's approximately 80 billion galaxies with an approximate 400 billion stars each. 32 sextillion stars. How many planets?

I give up. How many? And what's your point?

83 posted on 08/01/2006 4:02:51 PM PDT by Leroy S. Mort
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To: Leroy S. Mort

It might be possible to use guesses about the enormous numbers of planets to infer that some others are suitable for life. However, you still have to ensure that favorable conditions persist long enough for intelligent life, life capable of religious feelings to appear. On earth that took billions of years, roughly 1/3-1/4 of the estimated life of the universe. Planets like earth are made of recycled heavy elements from a previous generation of exploded stars. Many stars in the universe are not old enough to have gone through all this evolution.

Besides, the fundamental problem, which can't be dodged by any statistics regarding planetary numbers, is that the physical constants have to be just right, or else the universe (and there is only one that we know of) might have been nothing but energy. In effect, the universe was rigged from the beginning to make intelligent life possible somewhere.


92 posted on 08/01/2006 4:17:08 PM PDT by hellbender
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To: Leroy S. Mort

You wrote in post 7: Not a compelling argument for a divine creation given that there are quite probably trillions of planets in the universe.

How many? 

I don't know. There's probably more planets than stars so my guess is at least 32 sextillion planets.

And what's your point?

Assuming the above, expressed in trillions-of-planets, there's 32 billion-trillion planets. I assumed you weren't aware that it was even remotely close to that many trillions -- 32 billion-trillion. And even that may be two to four times too few.

132 posted on 08/01/2006 5:30:00 PM PDT by Zon (Honesty outlives the lie, spin and deception -- It always has -- It always will.)
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