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Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Olber's Paradox - Why Is the Sky Dark at Night?

Posted on 07:28 by Unknown
I know that may seem like a silly question at first glance, but there is a long history of seemingly silly questions that end up producing some mind-blowing and really counter-intuitive results that really get us to question our most basic presuppositions about the nature of reality, and in many cases redefine our understanding of the universe. This case is no exception.

So back to the question, sure, the sun is hiding on the other side of the planet, but there are stars in literally every possible direction, so photons are hitting us all the time from every possible direction. But if this is the case, shouldn't the night sky look bright from all these stars?

Well, as the following simple animation brilliantly demonstrates, the sky really is bright from all those stars... we just can't see all that light, not with our eyes anyway, but it is there, and what that tells us about cosmology and the universe is absolutely fascinating!


Bet you didn't see that coming, huh? No pun intended, actually. I was just blown away by the connections. This stuff is awesome :)
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