Last week my wife Jennifer was looking for something to read during her lunch break. She stumbled across this piece on reasons why we appear to be so alone in the universe. Read at your peril. The numbers are mind boggling.

As many stars as there are in our galaxy (100 – 400 billion), there are roughly an equal number of galaxies in the observable universe—so for every star in the colossal Milky Way, there’s a whole galaxy out there. All together, that comes out to the typically quoted range of between 1022 and 1024 total stars, which means that for every grain of sand on every beach on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there.

— The Fermi Paradox by Wait But Why