Scientists measure all the starlight produced by the observable universe

Washington, November 29 (EFE) .- According to a study published today by the journal Science, a team of American scientists has calculated all the starlight produced by the observable universe since its creation.

After analyzing data from NASA's Fermi Gamma Space Telescope, the astrophysicist from Clemson University (South Carolina, USA), Marco Ajello, and his team determined that the universe had generated 4 with 84 zeros. Starlight Photons.

According to scientists, this amounts to 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of photons, that is particles of visible light.

Astrophysicists believe that our universe, about 13,700 million years old, began to form the first stars at the age of a few hundred million years.

Now, according to his calculations, there would be about two trillion galaxies and one trillion billion stars.

"From the data collected by the Fermi telescope, we were able to measure the total amount of stellar light emitted, something that had never been done before," said Ajello, the author's principal author. 39; study.

The scientist explained that most of this light is emitted by stars found in galaxies, a conjuncture that allowed the team "to better understand the process of stellar evolution and to obtain a vision of how the universe produced its luminous content ".

Despite this extraordinarily high number, Ajello said that "it's worth noting that, with the exception of the light that comes from our own sun and our galaxy, the rest of the starlight that reaches the Earth is extremely dark ", which equates to a 60-watt light bulb.