There are more trees on Earth than stars in our entire galaxy.

In 2015, a major study led by Thomas Crowther at Yale University changed how we look at our planet. Before this, scientists used satellites to guess how many trees we had, but they could not see through thick leaves very well. Crowther’s team combined satellite photos with over 400,000 actual counts from people standing on the ground.The results were shocking. They found 3.04 trillion trees, which is nearly eight times more than the old guess of 400 billion. This means there are about 422 trees for every person on Earth. Most of these trees are found in the tropical forests, but the densest forests are actually in cold places like Russia and Canada.To compare this to space, astronomers from NASA look at the weight and movement of the Milky Way. They estimate there are between 100 billion and 400 billion stars. Even if we use the biggest number for stars, Earth’s trees still win by a landslide. For every star you see at night, there are at least seven trees growing right here.While stars need huge amounts of gas and gravity to form, trees just need sun, water, and soil. This allows them to grow very close together in forests. However, the study also found a sad detail. Since humans started building cities and farming, the number of trees on Earth has dropped by almost half. We lose about 10 billion more trees every year than we grow back.