5 mangoes. Obviously.
How much of the Galaxy has been explored?
- Thread starter Frankymole
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As far as I know, the EDSM map also displays Commanders who are offline. (Well, it does display me right now, even if I'm logged out of the site, and I'm not in-game.) So that's not who are currently playing, that's everyone who has uploaded and made public(!) their location.
5,000 explorers still active on DW2 sounds about right, if a bit generous estimate. (It's rounding up to the next thousand, and assuming that twice as many are still active as are still active on EDSM, but I'd wager that non-EDSM explorers are more likely to be less active.)
However, thanks to Orvidius' EDAstro, we have a per-day breakdown of new systems, bodies and stars logged on EDDN. If you take a look at those numbers, then 100,000 / day only ever happend twice since Chapter Four, on Jan. 20 and Feb. 10. Weekends when DW2 releases the next waypoint see a larger increase than usual (as in, compared to the increases of weekends before DW2 left), and the average is moving around 60-70,000 systems per day. However, the time after Chapter Four but before DW2 had 45-55,000 per day discovered already. Don't get me wrong, the difference of 5,000 - 15,000 systems per day is a big contribution: without it, exploration activity would have already dropped to below previous levels (of The Return and Beyond Chapter One), so Frontier should be glad that the expedition is going. However, those numbers are well off from a 100,000 / day average, and the monthly peak reached just over two million in 2019 January.
Oh yeah, and an interesting statistic about stars per system: since they are auto-scanned now, we can safely assume that based on the numbers uploaded, the average number of stars per system is two. Should be interesting to see if the number will change in any significant way once DW2 reaches the core.
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It's kind of a moot point, either way we're never going to explore every system in the game, there are just too many. That said, it would indeed take as long as the OP says (roughly).
People often look for the highlights, not just the average systems. Neutron stars are often found quickly, they're useful, and they can be found from the map.
Today, I've been flying around an area 8-10,000Ly from SagA*, not terribly far from the current DW2 waypoint. I kind of lost count, but I think I past through sixteen undiscovered neutron star systems today. In just a few hours.
My point is that, even with a type of star that players will be actively looking for, in an area not so far from inhabited space, the surface has barely been scratched. Yes, there are many explorers spending many hours on the game, but an awful lot overlaps, and just a small step off the beaten track is virgin territory.
The rate at which new systems are discovered away from the common areas is negligible. And unless something in the game changes, you're not going to start seeing a large number of treks out into the undiscovered lands.
Today, I've been flying around an area 8-10,000Ly from SagA*, not terribly far from the current DW2 waypoint. I kind of lost count, but I think I past through sixteen undiscovered neutron star systems today. In just a few hours.
My point is that, even with a type of star that players will be actively looking for, in an area not so far from inhabited space, the surface has barely been scratched. Yes, there are many explorers spending many hours on the game, but an awful lot overlaps, and just a small step off the beaten track is virgin territory.
The rate at which new systems are discovered away from the common areas is negligible. And unless something in the game changes, you're not going to start seeing a large number of treks out into the undiscovered lands.
Including me
Our galaxy contains between 200 and 400 billion stars and at least 100 billion planets. With multiple stars in some stellar systems, there could be 140 to 280 billion star systems in all.
The exact figure depends on the number of very-low-mass stars, which are hard to detect, especially at distances of more than 300 ly from the Sun. As a comparison, the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy contains an estimated one trillion (10^12) stars.
Our galaxy may also contain perhaps ten billion white dwarfs, a billion neutron stars, and a hundred million black holes.
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There are 400,000,000,000 stars in about 277,000,000,000 systems. So 160,000,000 explored/visited is roughly 0.057%
Apparently, the 400B refers to systems and not stars. And some estimate puts each system to have 2 stars on average. Which means 800B stars.
Latest scientific thinking is 250 billion ± 150 billion, that is 100 billion to 400 billion actual stars (if you're right and it averages two per system, then only 50Bn to 200Bn systems). I thought the Elite galaxy was based on known scientific data? It won't be 800Bn stars, or 400Bn systems.
The "400 billion star systems" (not stars) is FD's own figure. And the modelling was accurate, as per scientific knowledge back when the ED galaxy was created back in 2013. They certainly can't rescale the ED galaxy now, if newer knowledge shows the galaxy to actually be smaller than that.
As for the "average number of stars per system", preliminary results from my M-class survey (only 94 stars) gives an average stat of 1.58 stars per system. Though we'll need a much biugger sample size to get more confidence int he data. Other star classes are averaging higher but given that the galaxy could reasonably be summarized as "M-class stars, plus assorted minor debris", with M-class sytems outnumbering everything else put together, then I think this statistic is likely to be close to the truth. Maybe 1.6 to 1.8 stars per system, once it's all averaged out? So probably somewhere 700 billion actual stars.
There is good data on this, from EDSM. Since the game now auto-scans stars, we can assume those to be accurate.
Let's see... From 2018. Dec. 12 to 2019. May 24, 18,642,599 stars have been discovered in 10,489,569 systems. Meaning a galactic average of 1.78 stars per system. Your guesstimate was pretty good there!
However, the interesting part is that the daily average can vary surprisingly, going as high as 2.3 and as low as 1.2. The pattern seems clear though: it was the highest on the days when DW2 was in the core, started decreasing once the expedition('s bulk) left it, and is the lowest nowadays. It's really quite interesting how the distribution of explorers out in the galaxy can influence the average number of stars per systems submitted daily.
It should be possible to do more detailed breakdowns of stars per system, as per mass codes and/or as per sectors, but that would involve considerably more work.
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Fascinating. And 10,489,569 is a much bigger sample size than 94!
Though I'm wondering if it's still being biased by the route selection of the samplers; I'd assume most of the DW2 crew are veteran explorers, who are filtering for A and F stars only, except when they're way out on the fringe where the stars are too thin for "A&F filtering" to work properly.
Any bias towards over-inclusion of O and B-class stars is likely to increase the stars-per-system count, due to the high probability of such stars having swarms of T-Tauri "stars" in planetary orbits. My survey of 200 B-class stars returned an average of 3.15; A-class returned an average of 1.97.
Though I'm wondering if it's still being biased by the route selection of the samplers; I'd assume most of the DW2 crew are veteran explorers, who are filtering for A and F stars only, except when they're way out on the fringe where the stars are too thin for "A&F filtering" to work properly.
Any bias towards over-inclusion of O and B-class stars is likely to increase the stars-per-system count, due to the high probability of such stars having swarms of T-Tauri "stars" in planetary orbits. My survey of 200 B-class stars returned an average of 3.15; A-class returned an average of 1.97.
They're only estimates after all, and the latest thinking is, if I'm not wrong, fairly recent. I think the "twice the size" (250b+-150b you mention) compared to the older estimate of (100b) was in the past two years. Frontier tried to do it as scientific as possible, but there's so much new discoveries all the time. They did a great job, but there's still a lot missing (and some very strange bugs in the distribution as well).
Most CMDRs, even explorers, aren't spending most of their jumps going to previously undiscovered systems. I'm also at around 20k systems visited, but I've probably only been to maybe 1-2k that someone hasn't passed through first.
Only explorers comprehensively cataloging whole areas of virgin space are getting the bulk of their systems visited from unexplored systems and this is an extremely niche sort of activity.
The SI billion prefix giga is 10^9.
10^12 is English Long Scale.
It is and if one looks at how numbers of stars in our galaxy are estimated, even 800 billion is well within the realm of plausibility.
Even if it was off by a full factor of two, it would hardly be the largest inaccuracy in ED. Scientific data accumulates faster than it can be integrated into the game and since the ED Milky Way was generated, we've discovered that we've even got the shape of the Milky Way wrong. There is also the issue of the way star postions are generated in cubes, or how star catalogs are integrated, in ways that makes the distribution implausible in many areas.
Good point about how filtering might distort things, but I think you're wrong with your assumption about DW2. Of all who signed up, a bit less than 10% had even been to Beagle Point. That's not the criterion I'd use for "veteran explorers", but with that statistic in mind, no matter what criteria you use, they weren't a majority.
Are you sure about that? Your numbers look off to me, unless you never went off the beaten paths. (Incl. DW2.) I checked mine: 62k systems visited, at worst 14k were already discovered. (At worst because I got that number from EDSM, which doesn't have my pre-journal systems.) I did some area surveys, but I doubt they'd even reach 10k in total.
Generally, the experience of players seems to be that if you fly off the beaten paths, you'll rarely encounter any tags. The maps of the galaxy seem to support this.
That's my experience as well.
I'm just sckeptical of the numbers of explorers out there who are regularly off the beaten path.
My CMDR has been on a handful of significant exploration journeys, but at least half of the systems he's visited have been inside the bubble (a quarter of a million stars and well over 20k inhabited systems?) itself. Many CMDRs never leave the bubble and many of those who do go, via obvious paths, to sightsee at what has already been discovered.
Perhaps there are more like yourself who aren't cataloging whole areas, who still get a majority of their systems as first discoveries, but I am as certain as ever that this is an extreme niche activity, and anyone who has anywhere near 60k systems visited is part of a tiny minority.
I see, I misunderstood what you meant then.
Well, yes, explorers are a minority anyway. It has been noted several times before that exploration in Elite is almost as if it were a separate game in itself. As for how many there are who don't just go sightseeing but out into the unknown galaxy, well, I think that Orvidius' decaying heatmap video (linky) is quite informative. Even if we assume that only a quarter of Commanders upload to EDSM (although I wonder if this ratio might be better by now), one could still manually count from the video how many are out there.
Oh, and I tend to forget about EDSM's Commanders Map. Granted, that doesn't show Commanders whose location data is private, but still, the trend shows up nicely.
Well, yes, explorers are a minority anyway. It has been noted several times before that exploration in Elite is almost as if it were a separate game in itself. As for how many there are who don't just go sightseeing but out into the unknown galaxy, well, I think that Orvidius' decaying heatmap video (linky) is quite informative. Even if we assume that only a quarter of Commanders upload to EDSM (although I wonder if this ratio might be better by now), one could still manually count from the video how many are out there.
Oh, and I tend to forget about EDSM's Commanders Map. Granted, that doesn't show Commanders whose location data is private, but still, the trend shows up nicely.
According to my calculations here :
forums.frontier.co.uk
It will take about 830,000 years to completely explore the whole galaxy.
The Last Star - How long will it take to find it ?
This post gets a bit technical, but stick with it, the conclusion is worth it. There was a thread earlier this year about how long it is going to take to explore the whole galaxy: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/how-much-of-the-galaxy-has-been-explored.476528/ This post is related, but...
It will take about 830,000 years to completely explore the whole galaxy.
It is at least four hundred given systems often have more than one star per system.