Which One Is Larger, The Number Of Sand Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky? – ???????

[Bible Speaks]

Which One Is Larger, The Number Of Sand Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky?

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This one is perplexing  question, but this time with a surprise twist. The question is, and I bet you asked it when you were 8 years old and sitting on a beach with your parents: Which are there more of — grains of sand on the Earth or stars in the sky?

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Obviously, grains and stars can’t be counted, not literally. But you can guesstimate.

Science writer David Blatner, in his new book Spectrums, says a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii, being well-versed in all things beachy, tried to calculate the number of grains of sand.

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They said, if you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we’re speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains.

That’s a lot of grains.

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OK, so how about stars? It turns out that when you look up, even on a clear and starry night, you won’t see many stars. Blatner says the number is a low, low “several thousand,” which gives the sand grain folks a landslide victory. But we’re not limiting ourselves to what an ordinary stargazer can see.

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Our stargazer gets a Hubble telescope and a calculator, so now we can count distant galaxies, faint stars, red dwarfs, everything we’ve ever recorded in the sky, and there it is!

Now the population of stars jumps enormously, to 70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe (a estimate), so that we’ve got multiple stars for every grain of sand — which means, sorry, grains, you are nowhere near as numerous as the stars.

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So that makes stars the champions of numerosity, no?

Ummm, no. This is when Blatner hits us with his sucker punch. He says the number of stars in the heavens is “an unbelievably large number,” but then, as a matter of fact, he adds that you will find the same number of molecules “in just ten drops of water.”

WHAT?

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If you took 10 drops of water (not extra-big drops, just regular drops) and counted the number of H2O molecules in those drops, you’d get a number equal to all the stars in the universe.

This is amazing! For some reason, when someone says million, billion or trillion, I see an enormous pile of something, a gigantic scene, great sweeps of desert sand, twirling masses of stars. Big things come from lots of stuff; little things from less stuff. That seems intuitive.

But that’s wrong. Little things, if they’re really little, can pile up just like big things, and yes, says Blatner, water molecules “really are that small.”

So next time I look up at the sky at all those stars, I will be impressed, of course, by the great numbers that are out there. But I will remind myself that at the other end of the scale, in the nooks and crannies of the physical world, in the teeniest of places, there are equally vast numbers of teenier things.

We are surrounded by vastness, high and low, and either way, as Blatner’s book says, we “can’t handle the biggitude.”

Courtesy of: National Public Radio

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WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT THEM ALL?

Isaiah 40:26

“Lift up your eyes to heaven and see.

Who has created these things?

It is the One who brings out their army by number;

He calls them all by name.

Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power,

Not one of them is missing.”

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Psalm 147:4

"He counts the number of the stars;

He calls all of them by name.”

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Number of STARS. In addressing man, God used the stars to denote a countless number, comparable to the grains of sand on the seashore. (Ge 22:17; 15:5; Ex 32:13; compare Ne 9:23; Na 3:15, 16; Heb 11:12.) Since the stars clearly discernible to the unaided eye number only a few thousand, this comparison was viewed by many in the past as out of balance. Yet today the evidence shows that the number of stars does indeed compare to all the grains of sand in all the earth.

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Time and again the “SAND OF THE SEA” is used in the Bible to designate innumerableness or great abundance. (Ge 22:17; 32:12; 41:49; Jos 11:4; Ps 78:27;139:17, 18; Jer 15:8; Heb 11:12) But the number in question is not astronomically great in each case. To the beholder, however, the number of persons or things involved is so great that it cannot be ascertained. For example, one part of thePhilistine forces that came against Israel in the days of King Saul is described as “people like the grains of sand that are upon the seashore for multitude.” (1Sa 13:5) The number of those that would be misled by Satan following his release from the abyss, as seen by John in vision, was said to be “as the sand of the sea,” that is, the number was great enough that John could not determine how many there would be.—Re 20:8.

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However! Your HAIRS are Numbered! 

In addition to his illustration about the sparrows, Jesus said: “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:30) This brief but profound statement amplifies the point of Jesus’ illustration about the sparrows. Consider: The average human head has about 100,000 strands of hair. For the most part, one hair seems just like the next, and no single hair seems to deserve our particular scrutiny. Yet, each hair is noticed and numbered by Jehovah God. Since this is the case, isthere any detail of our life that Jehovah cannot know? Surely Jehovah understands the unique makeup of each of his servants. Indeed, he “sees what the heart is.”—1 Samuel 16:7.