Why we still don't know how many stars are in the Milky Way

Why we still don't know how many stars are in the Milky Way

It’s as simple and straightforward a question about our cosmic home as you can imagine: how many stars are in our Milky Way? While there’s an enormous amount that we know about our Universe with a significant amount of confidence — what types of matter and energy are present within it, how much of each species we have, how fast the Universe is expanding, how much time has elapsed since the hot Big Bang, how many galaxies are within it, etc. — le…