If you are in space can you see millions of stars? If trillions of starts exist why won't you be blinded?

Answer 1

This question was seriously pondered almost 200 years ago.

Olbers' Paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers_paradox

Answer 2

Try this for an analogy:
Part 1
Go outside at night, have someone with a small flashlight (or a single lit match)
1) shine it at you from 2 inches away.
2) shine it at you from 10 yards away.
3) shine it at you from 1/4 mile away.
4) now from 1 mile away.
the brightness of the light diminishes with distance. Admittedly, some of that might have to do with our atmosphere and particles of dust in it, but with dust clouds in space it would absorb some light too.

Part 2
The human eye has a limit on the minimum brightness it can detect. Now imagine a cat or owl (some animal with better night vision than humans), they might be able to see that flashlight from 1 mile away, but if we could do a further distance, eventually they wouldn't see it either.

I'm sure someone could come up with a formula for the brightness of light at some distance, but the bottom line is that a light becomes dimmer at further distances, therefore at the HUGE distances the (closest) stars are from earth, we can just see them as dim specks. Keep in mind that the ones you see are actually the closer ones (with some exceptions for bigger/smaller ones). The ones you can't see are even further away.

I remember hearing something about "humans can only see stars with a brightness of magnitude X". Based on that, there are only a couple thousand stars that can actually be seen from earth. Only the half in the night sky are visible at any single point in time, so the number drops even more.

In the end, the trillions of stars that exist are just too far away for their light to combine to enough brightness to "blind" you. Whether in space or somewhere else.

Answer 3

By the inverse square law, the light intensity diminishes with distance. This proves that the universe is not infinite, because if the universe was infinite, there would be an infinite number of stars and the light would be infinitely bright, no matter how far away the stars were, because there would be an infinite number of them and we would be blinded and there would be no night. If we were close up near to any individual star (like the sun) then we could be blinded by that one, if it was close enough.

Answer 4

Distance reduces the brilliance of the light so that the human cornea can absorb the light. Even our sun will not blind you if you look at it in a certain way. If the stars were bright enough to blind a person in space, the earth would never have a night period.

Answer 5

Relatively speaking, when you are in orbit you aren't really that much closer to anything else outside of the earth. So when Haleys Comet came through back in the mid-80's it was commonly thought that the space shuttle astronauts would have a front row seat to view it comming by earth. But it was actually easier for people on the ground with a telescope to see it than it was for the astronauts in orbit to see it.

Answer 6

If a grain of sand on the beach sparkles, would not an entire
beach of sparkling grains blind you ?
You cannot even see most of the stars ( or grains of sand )
unless you get closer or use some kind of optic aid...

Answer 7

One theory is that dark matter between the galaxies absorbs quite a bit of the light.

Answer 8

Becasue they are too far away to see brightly....