"our galaxy is not the universe, there are LOTS of galaxies. one estimate is 70 sextillion stars in the universe, which is 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.
if you could count one million stars per second, it would take you 22,196,854 lifetimes at 100 years per lifetime to count them all"
I just played a version of "Galaxy Song" (Eric Idle / John Du Prez) by Clint Black from his _D'lectrified_ album of 1999, and it reminded me of this exchange. Here are the lyrics, which are all factual, however hard to fathom:
"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'. *Our galaxy* itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick, But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide. We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point. We go 'round every two hundred million years, And *our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe*.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whiz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.*"
*Clint Black sings, "'Cause I'm afraid that we've been cheated here on Earth."
In case you haven't seen Monty Python's _The Meaning of Life_, in which this song made its debut, I recommend it.