how many known planets are there

[Hayden]

I took an astronomy class recently and we talked about estimating the number of planets in the universe. There are around 200 billion stars in our galaxy and also about 200 billion galaxies in the universe (which we know of, of course). And using our own solar system as an average example, we can estimate that for each star there are about eight planets. Soooooo.... our best guess for how many planets are really out there would be

200,000,000,000 x 200,000,000,000 x 8 = a shit load.

Me? I think the universe is just a never ending loopy donut, so I think the answer for "how many _____s are there?" is always infinite.