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View Full Version : Mass of the universe


rbawjaws
Mar 29, 2012, 12:24 PM
How ,without going into the maths can you possibly calculate the mass of the universe.Imean what information
Do you use.Sorry for being so uninformed.

ebaines
Mar 29, 2012, 01:28 PM
There's much uncertainty in terms of estimating the mass of the entire universe, but one way to do it is multiply the mass of the "average" star times the number of stars in the "average" galaxy times the estimated number of galaxies in the universe. This yeilds a rough estimate of about 3 x 10^52 Kg.

However, you have to be careful in talking about "mass," in that mass is really just a form of energy (from E=mc^2) and observers in different reference frames won't agree on an objects "mass." So it's more accurate to talk about the universe's total energy, as opposed to mass.

For more details see: Observable universe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe)