I may be badly mixing things up here. If I am, please kindly correct me.

As I understand it, if the universe was too dense at the start of the big bang, it would have collapsed back in on itself. Too sparse, and it would have expanded violently leaving no galaxies. I also read that the ratio of the actual density to the critical density (Omega) leaves little room for error, if you want to have a universe that lasts. The value seems to not be able to vary more than one part in 10^62.

Now I've also read that a recent estimate says there are about 10^23 stars (300 sextillion). I noticed that the number of stars is far fewer than the amount of variance allowed for in Omega.

So my question is: If you took away one solar mass worth of matter from the early universe, would that have thrown off the balance of the expansion of the universe? Would the universe have not been here if one star was missing?

I may be badly mixing things up here. If I am, please kindly correct me.

As I understand it, if the universe was too dense at the start of the big bang, it would have collapsed back in on itself. Too sparse, and it would have expanded violently leaving no galaxies. I also read that the ratio of the actual density to the critical density (Omega) leaves little room for error, if you want to have a universe that lasts. The value seems to not be able to vary more than one part in 10^62.

Now I've also read that a recent estimate says there are about 10^23 stars (300 sextillion). I noticed that the number of stars is far fewer than the amount of variance allowed for in Omega.

So my question is: If you took away one solar mass worth of matter from the early universe, would that have thrown off the balance of the expansion of the universe? Would the universe have not been here if one star was missing?

The TL;DR: The Acccepted Answer is "Yes, one star would make a difference. It would take even less to throw off Omega."

(For the benefit of others coming across this question)