Posted on 08/17/2016 5:41:51 AM PDT by rickmichaels
If the universe was infinitely old, as we used to assume, then it must be filled with an infinite number of stars and galaxies.
So why is the night sky not completely lit up by the light from these stars?
This question was first asked by the nineteenth century astronomer Heinrich Olbers, and the answer is, because of the age of the universe, not all of the photons have had enough time to reach us yet.
The amount of universe we are able to see is called the observable universe, and according to a pair of astrophysicists, it just got 320 million light years smaller.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I don't think that at all. Though no genius, I'm smart enough to realize that there is a lot I do not, and prolly will never, understand....and at my age, I can live with that.
Start with the Edge of Eternity, read all the robot short stories and books, then the “Empire” books, then the Foundation books, ALL of them that Asimov himself wrote.
It’s about 16 books. Get cracking!
I have been wading through the “Dune” books lately. That’s another long thread to weave through.
A little more...
All this discussion fades and seems irrelevant to me when I look through my little telescope. Not always, but every once in a while I will get an actual physical sensation while observing all the wonders and vastness out there. The only way I can describe it is that I feel like I almost understand infinity....but then I start to think and realize I don’t.
Don’t feel bad. I have just been playing word games with spatial dimensions, really. The folks who are really good at math try to deal with the four forces. (Gravity, electrical, weak, and strong). My feeble brain can’t even begin to deal with those.
IMHO, the important thing to understand is that we have a relationship, should we care to embrace it, with The Creator, for whom WE ARE the center of the Universe, each of us individually. If we can hold that fact in our feeble little minds amid all the distractions available we can keep our keels pretty well stabilized against any storm. Having done so we are thus free to make all sorts of wonderful observations from a “stable deck”. IMHO, those who try to make observations while being tossed about by random and many not so random things have a great deal of trouble making sense of their world, and not surprisingly so.
So what do we call whatis outside the universe? whatever it is, its 320 million light years closer
Where I live now, in VA, there is so much Haze and light pollution that we can’t see much beyond the major constellations and planets. I remember, as a teen, camping in New Mexico, laying back on my sleeping bag and just being left breathless. The combination of dry, dry air, no light pollution, and a teen’s young eyes. Man, you really could see “ infinity and beyond” it seemed.
As a teen it seemed to me that while my grandparents had seen man first fly and my parents (well, one of them) saw man go to the moon that our generation would see man go to the planets or beyond and our children definitely would. To me the true human tragedy of our generation is that we allowed the “forces of evil” to distract mankind with a useless, unwinnable “war on poverty” that squandered tens of trillions of dollars that should have been used to actually advance mankind technologically. We have allowed these evil people to chain mankind to this planet and THAT is a crime against humanity.
The fantasy of star travel is fine, but realistically, man will never travel beyond the solar system. We will never create a self-sustaining colony on the moon, much less on Mars or beyond.
Certainly the odds of doing so when we have wasted the resources required has been diminished but I am much more hopeful of doing all these things in the next 200 years or so than I am of seeing a President Trump next year.
well played, will played indeed...
prolly the speed of light since as soon as you kill the source, it will take as long as the last photon takes to hit your retina before the dark hits
Simply drop a bread crumb and if the Earth returns back to it, then the Universe is a donut.
But do not drop a donut crumb, that could get confusing.
Thanks FRiend.
most welcome...
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