are super bright. so why isn’t it basically daylight all the time?

Hey there my bright spots, Julian here for DNews.

It’s an interesting question, “why is space black?” Well fortunately, Fraser Cain,

who is brilliant and follows me on twitter and I am not worthy, recently discussed why

we’re not wearing shades 24/7.

Cain explains that the question was first asked by German Astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm

Olbers in 1823. It’s known as Olber’s Paradox, and states that if the universe is

infinite, static, and timeless, then the night sky should be lousy with stars. Obviously

though our night sky is more connect the dots than pointillism.

Edwin Hubble solved the paradox in 1929. He observed that everywhere he looked in the

universe, the spectrums of all the stars were slightly red, meaning the light coming from

them was being stretched out, meaning the space itself light was traveling through was

expanding. Ergo, the universe isn’t static and there must be stars that are so far away

their light just hasn’t had time to reach us yet.

So if we give it billions more years will we eventually be able to tan at midnight?

Don’t hold out too many hopes, because Hubble’s discovery of universal expansion also means

that the farther away something is, the faster the space between it and us is stretching

out. After a huge enough distance, space will be stretching out faster than light can close

the gap.

There’s another facet to the paradox though. Well, if the universe is all expanding away

from everything else, it stands to reason that if you go far back enough, it was all

clumped together. This is where the theory of the big bang comes in. But if there was

a bright instantaneous flash of existence that happened literally everywhere, shouldn’t

we be able to see that too? Again, the riddle is solved by the expansion of space.

In 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were working on a totally unrelated experiment

with a radio telescope and they couldn’t shake this weird, unwanted static. After making

sure everything was functioning correctly, even cleaning the inside of the antennae for

bird droppings for hours, they realized that the signal was coming from everywhere, and

you can’t stop the signal. They concluded that the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

must have been the light from the big bang, but had been stretched out after billions

of years until it was low-energy microwaves that our eyes can’t see. Boom, and the universe

makes sense again.

If you want to hear more possible evidence of the big bang, trace and Dr. Ian O’Neill

talk about gravitational waves and how they play into that over here.

What are some other implications of expanding space? I think it’s a great excuse to not

visit relatives, because, oh no, you’re just getting farther away, awww dang. Let

us know in the comments and I’ll see you next time on DNews.