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Caveat+: No one yet knows if we can even reliably count the planets of a distant star, so the figures could be off by some significant amount.

Caveat++: That light reaching earth from far away galaxies was then, this is now.



Caveat+++: We're also interested in moons, which I don't think have been detected yet.


Caveat++++: Factor in rogue planets that don't orbit any stars, or large asteroids drifting through nebulas etc...

I'm sure the number of solid bodies — potential habitats for life or artificial constructs — in our universe is magnitudes larger than the number of stars we've detected, and the latter is already a mind boggling quantity.




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