Are there really only 4 grains of salt in the entire universe?

[Ilikedogs]

What's up everybody,

I have a curiosity that struck me today and I figure some people here could probably provide some insight on. Today I was reading the book Broca's brain by Carl Sagan, and in it he pegs the number of atoms in a grain of salt to be around 10¹⁸. However, in the same passage, he provides the number of "elementary particles" to be around 10⁸⁰. I think he may have meant atoms by that, since I've seen numbers very close to that considered to be the number of atoms in the OU. I'm not extremely adept at math, but how are these two numbers compatable? Wouldn't the universe then necessarily be comprised of only about 4 grains of salt?

I know that this book was written about 30 years ago or so, and that a lot has changed in the interim, but I asked my dad (who works as a chemist for AstraZeneca), and he said that Sagans estimate of atoms in salt was basically on point. The 10⁸⁰ estimate is also found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe (last paragraph in the intro). So, what gives?

 

[FeDeX_LaTeX]

I may have mis-understood what you said, but if you're suggesting that 10¹⁸ * 4 = 10⁷², this isn't true at all. By Sagan's estimation, and if the number of atoms in the universe is 10⁸⁰, then the universe has 10⁶² more atoms than there are in a grain of salt.

 

[Ilikedogs]

Nah, you understood. Exponential notation is strange animal to me, lol.