[so on the other response of "small point", remember also that a star works
by converting hydrogen to helium, so while ours is at 92/8, others could be
50/50, 10/90, or 99/1...]

----------------

Someone who knows more about astronomy please correct me if I am
wrong, but once a star starts burning hydrogen, the process accellerates
gradually, so the time it takes to burn up the first 50% is much longer
than the last 50%.  This means many more stars have a preponderance of
hydrogen than those that do not.  This means there is more hyrogen in
stars than any other element, even than all other elements.

----------------

While that last one is going to be "a really big number", this will be
counting **ALL** the "legal" moves, not moves that any (competent) player
would ACTUALLY make (most people try to avoid loosing pieces "for free"
and/or placing themselves into a check[mate] condition)  And, of course,
while any of these positions may be "possible", the likelyhood of, say,
walking your pawns to the back row unnopposed AND without taking any pieces
along the way, etc., is pretty slim...

----------------

The presumtion was the number of 'possible' moves, not the 'reasonable'
moves.  If you have an infallible method of determining the best move,
then I have the name of the next Grand Master.  There are 20 possible
openings, and 20 possible replies, that is 400 right there.  Each pawn
can be promoted to one of 4 possible peices, so that makes 25600 possible
moves right there.  Also at least 8 peices have to be taken for the pawns
to reach the back row.  The bishops can only move to squares of their
own color (32), the rest can theoretically be on any square.........

You will need a better computer than I have to do the math.

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