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What is now the current accepted theory of Olbers' Paradox? From what I understand, it's one of 2 things - Universe is still expanding (red-shift light and then becomes microwaves)
- Universe is young and the distant light hasn't reached us yet.
Or a combo of the 2.
But would that really explain why there is hardly any light throughout space? Or is it as simple as that the Universe is so large, that stars' light is not enough to light it up. Such as a weak flashlight would just be a shining spot in a dark NFL stadium?
I had never heard of this but on looking it up, it’s only a paradox in a homogenous “infinite and eternal static universe”. Most current theories are that we do NOT inhabit that kind of universe so it is perfectly reasonable that we don’t see this effect. One could even consider that, since we do not see this, it is a strong indication that our universe is therefore dynamic, heterogenous, expanding at an ever increasing rate and not eternal but existing only since the time of the Big Bang.
The daytime sky is blue because light from the nearby Sun hits molecules in the Earth's atmosphere and scatters off in all directions.
At night, when that part of Earth is facing away from the Sun, space looks black because there is no nearby bright source of light, like the Sun, to be scattered.
On the Moon, for example, which has no atmosphere, the sky is be black both night and day.
Stars haven’t existed long enough to fill the Universe with their light, which is also stretched and weakened by the cosmic expansion.
Our universe was birthed, created 13.8 billion years ago. Stars have been born and died for most of that time. The universe should be filled with light from all directions, yes? A uniform glow should light the night sky.
The night sky isn't glowing though. Why? The universe is expanding. You may have read that nothing can exceed the speed of light. The universe though is 96 billion light years across. 96 billion light years in 13.8 billion years and yet nothing can exceed the speed of light How?
Space is expanding. Space is nothing, space is empty for most part. Nothing CAN exceed the speed of light. Space is black because of the expansion of the universe and light waves are being stretched to where the light becomes invisible and we see nothing.
We actually don't know whether it's infinite or not.
There's also dark matter, & dark energy. The dark matter seemingly only interacts with normal matter (& energy?) by gravity - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter for a discussion of the two.
Without invoking Big Bang, I go for the simpler explanation that the basic assumptions are wrong. The real universe is not infinite. There are not an infinite number of stars. The stars have finite lives. And the universe is not homogenous. Since the basic assumptions of Olber's Paradox are not true, then there is no paradox.
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Q: Why is Space black?
