Outer space is filled with trillions of giant balls of burning hydrogen and helium, or what we call stars. With all that light being thrown off, why does outer space look so dark?
It turns out the answer is fascinating. It also turns out people have been thinking about this question for a long time.
The puzzle was originally described by a German astronomer in the 1800s. It’s known as Olbers’ Paradox.
Basically, Olbers wondered why, when there are so many bright stars in the universe, we don’t see the sky as a giant glowing orb.
The answer is that even though there are a lot of stars and galaxies in the universe, the universe is also very, very big. It’s also very old, at almost 14,000,000,000 years.
That means that although there’s a huge number of very bright stars, they’re spread out over trillions of light years of distance. And some of the stars that are furthest away from us, despite burning for billions of years, have not had time for their light to even reach us.
As a result of this vastness and age, outer space is not as bright and full of light as you might expect. We do see stars, of course. But there’s not nearly enough of them, and they’re not densely distributed enough, or new enough, for us to see their light all the time.
As a result, we can enjoy the beautiful blackness of the night sky while also enjoying the presence of those tiny pinpricks of starlight that we can indeed see. Ultimately, isn’t that much more profound than a sky that’s totally full of light?
This post was written by a human #noai
