Why does outer space seem dark despite the presence of the bright sun

Written By رنا السيلاوي on 2021/06/29

This article was written originally in Arabic and is translated using a 3rd party automated service. ArabiaWeather is not responsible for any grammatical errors whatsoever.

Weather of Arabia - When you look at the night sky or see pictures of the universe online, you will see the darkness of space interspersed with bright stars and bright planets, but why does space seem dark and black despite the presence of these luminous bodies? Why is space not as luminous as the sky of the earth during the day?!

You might think that because there are billions of stars in our galaxy, and planets that reflect light, the space in our night sky would appear very bright, but it is actually very dark!

This paradox, known in physics and astronomy as Olbers' Paradox, can be explained by the space-time expansion theory - because our universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, light coming from far away is stretched and transformed into infrared waves, microwaves and radio waves, which cannot be seen by the eye. Humans, so they appear opaque (black) to the naked eye.

Also, stars emit light in all spectra, even spectra that are not visible to the human eye, such as ultraviolet or infrared rays, and if we could see these waves, we would definitely see all space glow!

Another reason for the darkness of space despite the presence of luminous objects is that space is almost a complete vacuum, while the sky of Earth appears blue during the day because the particles that make up the atmosphere scatter a lot of blue and violet wavelengths of visible light coming from the sun, scattering the light in all directions.

In the absence of matter and particles that scatter the light, then the light travels in a straight line and does not scatter, and since space is an almost complete vacuum - meaning it contains very few particles - there is almost nothing in the space between stars and planets that scatters light.

This article was written originally in Arabic and is translated using a 3rd party automated service. ArabiaWeather is not responsible for any grammatical errors whatsoever.


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