This Blog Post is centered on the Olbers Paradox.
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers was a German Astronomer who raised the question of why the sky is dark at night! I will walk you through this paradox and how Heinrich come to his conclusion on it.
When we look up into the sky at night we see a dark canvas with tiny specs of light. Olbers raised the question of if there are an infinite amount of stars in an infinite amount of space, then shouldn’t there be a night full of stars?
So how come the night is so dark? There are two main reasons for this.
- Expansion- We know that The Universe is expanding. As The Universe expands, the light from distant galaxies stretch, increasing it’s wavelength to the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, this is known as Red Shift and as light from distant galaxies stretches it becomes invisible to the human eye.
- Finite Age- When we look up at the stars, we seem them as they were when thee light was first emitted due to the finite speed of light. The light from very distant stars still haven’t reached us.
So to summarize and contribute to a better understanding, the night skies darkness is explained by an expanding finitely old Universe.
This is the simplest form I can put this into.
I hope that you found this bog post either: (A) Interesting Or (B) Informative I hope that you enjoy the rest of your day and goodbye!