Putting it all in Perspective

From FoxTrot.Com.

Interesting Thought

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

- Richard Feynman

From quotationspage.com

Is this Douglas Adams's Universe?

For those wondering, consider this.

AFTER pondering the weighty question of the mass of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have come up with an answer: 42.

That is, our galaxy weighs three times 10 to the power of 42kg - a number written as 3 followed by 42 zeroes, which has echoes of author Douglas Adams's fictional answer to the question of life, the universe and everything in his series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It isn't quite "Life, The Universe, and Everything." But it is a sizeable portion of it. Be on the watch out for two-headed hipsters and mice on talk shows.