The whole article is quite an entertaining read, and Poe's "Eureka" can be read here:

http://eserver.org/books/poe/eureka.html

That's a great analogy for so many things. "In the middle of trouble when you're feeling blue, hope is still there just hidden from view." Is it a matter of perception? If so, does that mean joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, are illusions because they are subjective?

Soooo.... what you've placed on the mirror staring me back in the face is that it's all about our perception - our ability, or lack thereof, to perceive What IS.

This reminds me (for some strange reason) of an experience I had about 5 years ago where I was meditating and suddenly had 360 degree vision. Everything was where it should be, no weirdness in the physical stuff around me (meaning the altered state was not all that altered, and I was still in my body), yet I could see all 360 degrees at once. Obviously this was not done with my physical eyes. But the point is, there was light when viewing this way, whereas if I were looking through my physical eyes, there would not have been any, because there was no physical source for the light.

So this whole dark night sky thing,  like seeing the day sky as blue instead of purple, may simply be due to limitations in our physical form's ability to process information, eh? Right on, montalk. You da man!

Thanks!!
Sowelu

The paradox is correct that the amount of photons reaching us does not change with the shell radius. Whether we consider stars ten light years or a million light years away, each shell sends us photons in the amount of 4*PI*I photons, where I is the average number of photons the average star radiates.

However, there is more to eyesight than just the density of photons passing through our pupils. What also matters is the angular spread or focus of these light rays.  The more diffuse the rays, the more a given quantity of photons is spread out over the retina and the fewer photons each cone or rod receives. Beneath a certain threshold the cones or rods do not fire and we see only darkness.

A star in the sky sends very little light our way. But the only reason we can see it is because the source of light is a pinpoint, meaning its angular spread is very small. So despite the low number of photons passing through the pupil, they hit a small enough area of the retina that the rods or cones located there receive sufficient concentration of photons to trigger.

But if we spread the pinpoint of light into a uniformly glowing shell, which is what the paradox assumes through its calculations, then the number of photons hitting each rod or cone drops to beneath the detection threshold. Thus we see darkness.

So the universe does glow, but even with 4*PI*I photons the light is so spread out that our eyes do not pick up this glow.  It's like a magnifying glass focusing the sun's rays -- the same amount of light always passes through it, but depending on the diameter the focal point can be either diffuse or too bright to look at.

Can't find the link right now, but I once read that frog or toad eyes are so sensitive that they can see an infinite distance into the night sky which to them would look like a glowing field.

I was told by somebody that space isn't what they're telling us it is.  That if you built a spaceship and went up there yourself, and got far enough from Earth, things would look different than you could ever imagine.

BINGO! Now we are getting somewhere. Of course they're lying about space! Just like they lie about everything else! Was it really that much of a suprise?

Ever see Contact? I had wished that representation of the vast beauty of space was accurate somehow.

Here's one - How is it threre are no stars in space when seen from video from the lunar landings? DX Too advanced for that level of special effects? I'm guessing they will say that the 'exposure' of the camera didn't allow it, etc. . . .

Don't know if it's true or not, but considering the other things this person has told me, most of which have proven to be true in some form or another as the years wear on, I do have to wonder.  The conviction with which it was said....I don't know, it still gets me when I think back on it.

I'm left with something the C's once said when Laura asked them how big the universe really is.  They said, "If we answered that it would be like telling a 4 year old child that there is no Santa Claus."

Read between the lines on that one, and add in the stuff I mentioned before.   It makes you really wonder about the nature of outer space.

But, at night when darkness falls,
they reappear,
we can see them all.

Myopic during the light of day?
But in darkness we can see light-years away?
It's an optical "illusion", that's all I can say!

-----

Ergo it's (sun)light which obscures our view? Thought it was the opposite. Light refraction and all that jazz. But, hey what do I know. Nada.

The Moon as a Death Star, eh? Sure, I'd buy that. Why not!

What?

I'd explain it in more detail, but since you say you're no scientist, all the complexities will sail over your head.

I'm no scientist, by any means, but I've seen some amazing work by a few here, so I thought I'd ask about this.

Olber's Paradox: Why is the Night Sky Dark?
Suppose that the universe is (1) static, (2) infinite, (3) eternal and (4) uniformly filled with stars (or galaxies, which are made of stars). If we look in any direction, our line of sight must eventually run into a star (galaxy), just as a frictionless arrow shot in the middle of an infinite forest will eventually stick itself into a tree. Therefore, the night sky should be as bright as the average star (galaxy) and certainly should not be dark.

Of course, most distant stars will appear to be fainter than nearby ones; their brightness will fall off as 1/d2, where d is their distance. But, at the same time, there will be many more stars at larger distances than smaller ones, and the number at the larger distance will increase with d2 so that the two effects should cancel.

Basically, the flux arising from all the stars in a given shell, is equal to the product of the flux arising from an average star at that distance times the number of stars per shell. If the density of stars in constant (assumption 4 above), then the number of stars in a shell is just the number of stars in the shell times the volume of the shell:

where t is the thickness of successive shells, and n is the number density of stars per unit volume. Therefore the flux arising from each shell is constant, that is, stars at any given distance from us contribute the same amount of flux as stars at any other distance. In every direction our line of sight should intercept the surface of a star and thus the sky should be bright (and the universe should be warm!).

http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/acad … aradox.htm