How many atoms are there in the universe?

Hi.  You ask fun questions!

According to this Ask the Astronomer site:

http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/q1797.html

the answer is in the neighborhood of 10^78 atoms, give or take a
couple of gazillion.

The Mad Scientist site:

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may98/892502124.Ph.r.html

puts it at 10^79...pretty close agreement, if you ask me.

Of course, they're all guessing, but it's impressive work, just the same.

Let me know if you need any more information here.

pafalafa-ga


search strategy:  I fed your question verbatim into Google and came up
with a lot of good links.