If the sun gives us light, then how come it is dark in outer space.?

Answer 1

I love the question, its brilliant.. The universe is not confind and so light from the sun 'spreads' as far as light travels, but our sun is not large enough for its light to travel universally. Its not like a light bulb in a room..
Space is dark so we can only see suns and the planets that reflect the light from the suns rays.

Answer 2

Because light rays need a medium, an atom, to interact with. An atom absorbs a light ray, it's electrons move to a higher permitted "orbit" -- the atom gets "excited" -- and then when it calms down again, it emits that light (a photon) in a certain wavelength. If the wavelength is in the visible light spectrum, the cones in your eyes will interpret that light as "blue" or "red" or whatever. Since space is for all means and purposes a vaccuum, there are not enough atoms to make a light show. But if you're in space orbiting the moon, there's plenty of light. The sun's rays reflected off the moon by interacting with the atoms of the moon's surface will appear as "white" or "yellow." Also, the Great Nebula In Orion is another example of light in action. The starlight of newborn stars strips the electrons of the atoms in the molecular cloud the stars formed in, ionizing those molecules and making them glow. So, it's not "dark" out there.

Answer 3

This is a good question, but, unfortunately, not very easy to answer.

One could think that due to all those stars shooting light in space the latter should have been a very bright place. Indeed this would have been true if space was an infinate old static place. But it is not.

There are two main reasons why Space is dark.

1) Because the universe is not infinitely old, that puts a limit to how long the light from all those stars can have travelled. So some of the light has not gotten here yet. Because stars do die out, that means that their light dies out too - which means that we may get the light from some stars at one time, and the light from some other stars at a different time, but not all the light of all the stars that everywhere put together.

2) The universe is expanding and due to this expansion far away stars and galaxies travel at an evermore increasing speed away from us. This causes the doppler effect phenomenon to "kick in" and the further the source is then its bright white light becomes red and eventually stops beeing light and becomes microwave radiation. To understand this I urge you to do the following experiment. Listen to a police siren of a car as it travels away from you. You should notice its sound becomes deeper and deeper as it travels further away. Thus its frequency becomes lower. The same happens to light, as the source of white light travels away from us the lights frequency becomes lower and lower finally becoming red and then non-visible radiation.

I know that this might be difficult to understand

Answer 4

It's not dark in outer space. It looks dark from here because light has to hit something and be reflected back to your eyes to see it. If you are staring into space there is nothing for the light to hit, except the moon, and that is why the moon appears to glow, because the light from the sun reflects off of it.

Answer 5

A photon (light particle) must reflect/refract off of something in order to be seen by the human eye. You can see planets and other celestial bodies in outer space because of this reflection. However, the "empty space" (which is actually not empty) between this visible bodies doesn't have things big enough for our eyes to pick up this reflection/refraction.

This reflection/refraction of a photon is what makes things visible. If there is no reflective surface, there will be no liight perceived. Hope that helps

Answer 6

the reason why all planets are bright when the sun shines on them is due to reflection from the particles in the air... In planet earth, all around us are particles, thus what u see is just the reflection. In outer space, u DO see reflections do you? if not how will u see the planet earth in the outer space? cos earth alone is one BIG "particle" just that in outer space, the light travels for infinity... thus there are no reflections, making it appear dark

Answer 7

In order for the human eyes to see light, light needs to be reflected by a surface. Since space is practically empty, no light is reflected and therefore it appears dark. It does not however mean that the photons of light are not travelling through it; it simply means that it is not seen because there is nothing to reflect light.

Answer 8

Well, it's simple. Like any other light device (battery, for example) it has a certain range. Everything after that is dark. Like when you are driving through a tunnel. Your lights can light only to a certain point, and not beyond. Plus, you have to calculate the infinity of the space here, as well.

Answer 9

the sun's light is scattered in the earth's atmosphere, so that in the daytime it looks bright everywhere.

the sun can definitely be seen in outer space. and it's very bright being so nearby. but there's no atmosphere to scatter the light, so if you look away from the sun it is dark (except where there's a surface to reflect the light).

Answer 10

Two parts to the anwser. 1. Earth is relatively close to the sun in relation to most of the universe. 2. In order for sunlight to be bright it must be reflected/refracted off of something. The moon is visible not because it exudes light but because it refracts the light from the sun.