Basically, the supposed paradox is that if the universe is large enough to encompass enough stars for every angle of our vision then why is the night sky dark? I've heard a few explanations for this but they just don't seem to work for the logical side of my brain. I'd like to hear a good scientific explanation for this.
Yeah but the ratio of matter that makes up planets and black holes in the universe to the amount of matter that makes up stars is ridiculously small. There will be some bigger star to cover up the planet or black hole you're talking about.
you know that for a fact? and think about an eclipse. the moon is how many times smaller than the sun, and yet it can still shade a huge portion of our planet.
Yes I do. The most abundant elements in our universe are by far the gases, which form gas giants yes, but even those are minute compared to stars. Our sun is rendered invisible by some stars when compared side by side. And yes but the moon causing an eclipse has to do with the proximity of the moon to the earth. If you hold a penny at arms length you can't cover up a car in your field of vision twenty feet away. But hold it a few inches away and you could block out the mass of multiple cars. It's the same concept.
yes but in a cosmic sense the moon is like a grain of sand on a beach. what if you held the dinner plate at arms length? you could cover up a car twenty feet away. you could also block an entire city a few miles away.
NO papageorgio it is not explained by matter blocking starlight. Some light is being blocked no doubt but look up at the sky on a clear night and try to tell me that all that blackness is caused by insignificantly tiny planets and dust clouds. Also dust clouds heat up and act like black body radiators. In reality we simply do not have a clear explanation. 1 nevertheless the most compelling theory is that the universe is too young for the light from all these "infinitely many" stars to have reached us yet--we can only observe the objects within our event horizon of 13.7 billion light years. 2 In addition it is believed that because the universe is still expanding light from many stars is red-shifted into obscurity. 3 And lastly least importantly and purely theoretical is the notion that stars are not distributed evenly throughout the universe so that there may be infinitely many of them but they are clustered together leaving much of the sky dark. hope that helped clear it up ninja
Thanks that clears it up. The one explanation I had heard was a bit like number 2 but the way you reiterated it makes a bit more sense.
I was watching one of those morgan freeman documentaries on the science channel and they were saying that the amount of gravity in our universe is not proportionate to the amount of matter in our universe. This must mean some type matter (darkmatter/Antimatter or dark energy) must be out there somewhere making the universe heavier. based on this, my personal theory is that Dark energy is space. We cannot detect dark energy at all yet and are slowly learning its relationship to matter via the LHC (Large Hadron Collider. Because we cannot detect it, space appears black. my 2cents
This is prob the best response yet #1 counts only for stars that are further than our visible horizon. #2 i did not know that happened but the physics of it makes perfect sense #3 is wrong they r distributed evenly. at least thats what wee see from as the imaging we have so far. a few other things as well: 1. light get scattered as it enters our atmosphere. If i remember scattering correctly the light hits an atom in the atmospher and is absorbed and emitted by an electron, but when it is emitted it is sent in different directions. 2. City lights from around the world often 'drown out' alot of light. 3. light does curve when passing close to massive bodies. this changes their trajectories. However this overall effect is cancelled by the homogeneity and isotropic nature of space. 4 'Light' from stars may not always get to us in the Visible portion of the Electromagnetic spectrum. If a star emits light and it heads directly to us, in the long time it takes to get to us the light can change its frequency lower (redshift) or higher (blueshift) if the frequency of light changes too much it may cease to be visible e.g. x rays, radio waves, gamma rays are all Electromagnetic waves that differ only by their frequency. So lets say blue visible light that left the star may get to us as a Infrared or radio waves which we cannot see with our eyes. For example light passing near a massive start may be gravitationally redshifted out of the visible range of the Electromagnetic spectrum. So to our eyes it might appear that nothing is there. these are some reason that i can think off of the top of my head #2 and #4 ar the main ones i think, and I'm sure there are more reasons.
Black holes are nearly impossible to spot, you have no idea how many are out there man. And if a bigger star did cover up a black hole, the black hole would engulf that star.
Quick correction: the most abundant elements in the Universe are hydrogen and helium, which, depending on the circumstances, can be found in either solid, liquid, or gaseous form. Olber's paradox doesn't have a satisfactory solution yet but the most plausible explanation I've heard has to do with the Hubble radius. Basically: The rate at which the space between two objects expands is a function of Hubble's law, which basically states that the rate of expansion and the distance between two objects is directly proportional -- as one increases, so does the other. Now, if you step back and think about it, since the two objects aren't exactly moving away from one another -- it's just that new space is being created between them constantly -- there's nothing stopping them from expanding away from each other faster than the speed of light. So it stands to reason that there's a certain distance beyond which objects will be receding away from us faster than the speed of light -- meaning their light can never get here, because for every meter the light travels more than one meter of distance is created. The radius for this is calculated to be about 13.8 billion light-years. So we can't actually see everything in the Universe, and beyond the 13.8 bn light year mark there's a black curtain we can't directly see beyond. Also, if you check out the Hubble Deep Fields, you'll know that even within the 13.8 bn light year radius, we have enough galaxies to fill up the sky -- it's just that they're so fucking far away that they're either a) redshifted out of the visible spectrum, or b) so small and dim that our eyes can't detect them. If not both.
Idk maybe its just me but you said that the universe is able to encompass enough stars to completely fill our vision.. not it does. We really dont kno wtf is completely out there and who says all those stars are in our dimension? But other then that the most plausible argument is that it takes "time" for all that star light to hit us i mean were lookin at shit that happened thousands and billions of years ago but this viewpoint has already been statedddd