Olbers' Paradox: What the mystery of the night sky teaches us about our Universe | BBC Science Focus Magazine - Deepstash

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

The Universe: Infinite Or With A Boundary

The Universe: Infinite Or With A Boundary

Whether it’s more troubling to imagine that the Universe goes on forever in every direction, or that it has an edge, beyond which there is nothing, is hard to say.

Astrophysics doesn’t provide any guidance as to which flavour of existential crisis we should be having – while we can’t say with any level of confidence whether the Universe goes on forever or not, we can say that our observable universe has an edge, in the sense that there’s a distance beyond which, whatever may or may not exist, we absolutely cannot see it.

12

114 reads

Olbers’ Paradox

Olbers’ Paradox

Olbers’ ParadoxΒ asks: if the Universe is infinite, and if there are stars (or galaxies) throughout it, why is the sky dark? Surely, if we look in any direction in the sky, that sightline will, eventually, land on a star. Common sense, therefore, tells us that everywhere we look, the sky should be as bright as the Sun, constantly aglow.

14

114 reads

The Standard Resolution

The Standard Resolution

The standard resolution to this paradox invokes the finite age of the cosmos and the speed ofΒ light. Even if the cosmos is endless and full of stars, one might reason, we can only see the ones that are close enough for there to have been enough time (since the beginning of the Universe) for the light to reach us from there. Anything distant enough from the Earth that the light travel time is more than the age of the Universe is invisible to us.

12

89 reads

The Age Of The Ever-Expanding Universe

The Age Of The Ever-Expanding Universe

The stranger physics comes in when you ask, what are those things whose light has travelled for that long? TheΒ Big BangΒ theory says that the Universe 13.8 billion years ago was a hot, dense inferno, in which all of space was filled with glowing-hot plasma, rippling and churning like the surface of the Sun. Because all of space was glowing, when we look into the farthest reaches of the cosmos in any direction, that glow is in fact what we see.ο»Ώ

12

78 reads

Another Paradox Resolved

Another Paradox Resolved

The reason the Universe can be glowing all around us but still look dark comes down to the physics of light in an expanding universe. When space expands, and the distance between objects grows, the light passing between those things gets stretched out, shifting the light to lower frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum.

For visible light, lower frequencies correspond to redder colours, so this effect is called β€œredshift”. You can think of it like a Doppler shift – the same kind of effect that’s responsible for a siren dropping to a lower tone when an ambulance speeds away from you

14

82 reads

We Are Not The Center Of The Universe

We Are Not The Center Of The Universe

While we may never know if the Universe as a whole is infinite or bounded, we know that theΒ cosmic microwave background – the distant shell of fading fire that surrounds us – is the most distant light we can ever see, at the edge of our observable universe. But just like the darkness of the night sky, this edge is a matter of perspective. Someone living in a galaxy billions of light years away from us sits at the centre of their own observable universe, which may only partly overlap our own.

11

76 reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

holdenioo

How we talk to each other determines a big part of how we live.

Holden O.'s ideas are part of this journey:

How To Live A Long Life

Learn more about sciencefiction with this collection

The importance of physical activity

The role of genetics in lifespan

How to maintain a healthy diet

Related collections

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

β€”

100+ Learning Journeys

β€”

Access to 200,000+ ideas

β€”

Access to the mobile app

β€”

Unlimited idea saving

β€”

β€”

Unlimited history

β€”

β€”

Unlimited listening to ideas

β€”

β€”

Downloading & offline access

β€”

β€”

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates