There are likely more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches.

Astronomers estimate the observable universe contains somewhere on the order of 10^22 to 10^24 stars, spread across an estimated hundreds of billions of galaxies. Independent estimates of the number of sand grains across all of Earth’s beaches and deserts land in a lower range, often cited around 10^18 to 10^21 — meaning stars likely outnumber grains of sand by a factor of a thousand or more.

Both figures are necessarily rough approximations; nobody is literally counting stars or sand grains one by one. But the comparison is a favorite among astronomers precisely because both numbers are so far beyond ordinary intuition that the only way to grasp either one is by weighing it against another number that’s just as incomprehensible.