athiests... if there are so many stars in universe why is sky dark at night?

Question

there should be light everywhere.

i don't think there are more than 5000 stars in universe, i think they are fixed to solid firmament. and there is no solar system.

earth is flat immobile circle and i believe Genesis more than scientists man's word.

satan can never decieve me!!!!!


http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/......

Answer 1

This question is known as "Olbers' Paradox" after the scientist who first posed it, back in 1823.

The point of the paradox is that if the Universe is infinite, that would mean that if you go far enough in every single direction, you would eventually hit the surface of a star. Therefore, the night sky should be bright, not dark.

The answer to the paradox is that the Universe is not infinite in space-time. At the time of the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, it was very small, and it has been expanding ever since that time. That means that we cannot see anything that is over 14 billion light-years away, because there has not been enough time for its light to reach us yet.

And by the way -- with any pair of binoculars, even a bad pair, you can see more than 5000 stars with your own eyes.

And I hope someday you can get online and IM with somebody in Australia. If you do, be sure and ask them if the Sun is up where they are.

Answer 2

I am not an atheist, I'm a Christian...but I find this very unintelligent. Do yourself credit and don't believe everything you read....

The reason the sky is dark is because all the stars are not lined up one by one in a row. They are at various and vast distances from us and from one another. This is also why some are brighter than others (not to mention size).

Get 10 friends together, all with very bright flash lights. Have them all stand at different distances away from you, from 1/2 a mile to 1 mile away with a span of 100 yards wide. You will see..all those flash lights will not light up the entire area. Because they are all at different distances. Now get them all to line up one by one and hold their flashlights close and they WILL light up the area....

Have you read much of Genesis? I think if you did, you would find that the first layer of firmament the Bible describes is the Earth. There is only one firmament in which the Bible speaks...so if it is in the sky...where is the earth? The Bible stated that there was water, firmament and water. This is how God created the earth. According to the Bible there was once a hyperbaric-like chamber that the world was enclosed in (that is why people and animals were so much bigger than...research hyperbaric chambers). Up until the time of the flood, it had never rained. But God, at this point, caused all the first layer of water to rain down, flood the earth, and then they froze in enormous ice caps at the earth's poles.

The Bible does not say the world is flat and does not say the world is immobile!!! That would mean the Bible is a falible book. The earth is tilted and it does indeed spin. How would the sun and the seasons be if the world did not turn? This is ludicris and I suggest that you go back and read Genesis yourself. Yikes. You are treding in VERY dangerous territory!


PS if there are only 5000 stars in the sky and you believe what the Bible says, then why did God once refer to the stars as being countless in number...I bet even you can count to 5000. So please read the bible before you believe these strange theories...it's really inaccurate and does our belief great injustice....as if we need anymore stigma attached to our name.

Answer 3

I take it you're unreceptive to the universe being merely 12 billion years young. To clarify things a bit more, if the universe had always existed, as some faiths claim, (that is, infinitely old), the light from the furthest reaches would all converge in our night sky. IOW, there would be small patches of midnight blue scattered everywhere, instead. Doppler Effects are another way to confirm distances. The Bible does not say nor suggest the planet is flat. If you really believe the Earth is flat, investigate Archimedes. The story is once every year light would shine down a well perfectly. Archimedes estimated the radius of the Earth by measuring the distance to the next town's waterhole and observing the distance the shadow shifted. The distance walked became the angle to the center of the Earth. The rest was just some number crunching. Obviously, with the radius, he doubled it for the diameter. Centuries later, his estimation was within a few percent.

Answer 4

There are a billions upon billions of stars in the universe. The problem that the total amount of starlight reaching earth should be infinite was proposed a long time ago based a cimple calculus integration. It is called Olber's paradox. There are many ways in which this paradox is dispelled, including the fact that univeral expansion and its consequent redshift moves visible light into the invisible portions of the spectrum making many stars invisible. There are many more explanations which I will not go into and its likely that the true reason is a combinition of various factions.
And by the way you are right on target. Satan cannot fool us for he is nonexistant.

Answer 5

since you ask in the science section i will treat this as a serious question, because it was a serious question at one time. it was known as olber's paradox.

if, as was thought, the universe was infinite, then it should be the case that every point on the sky ended at the surface of a star, so that the whole sky should be as bright as the sun.

several factors combine to ensure that this is not the case: the speed of light is finite, the universe came into its present form a finite amount of time ago (so that, despite the fact that the universe may be infinite in spatial extent, there are not an infinite number of visible stars, only a very large number, about 10^22), and the universe is expanding so that ancient starlight (and light from recombination, the cosmic background radiation) is red shifted to wavelengths that are not visible to the human eye.

Answer 6

The fact that the sky is dark at night proves that the universe is a finite entity with a beginning and an end.
If the universe was infinite there would be an infinite number of stars in it and the sky would be brilliant all the time.

Answer 7

Believing in Astronomy does not automatically make you an atheist. In fact, in the early days when the Big Bang theory was proposed, one of the main reasons most didn't like it was because they were atheist and thought that a big bang meant that there was a "beginning" to the universe, which implies a reason for it, which they thought was evidence of God. And now look at it, its basically universally accepted by the science community as the true theory about the universe's beginning.

Answer 8

You are like someone standing on the Jersey shore across from Manhattan who refuses to believe there is a huge city behind them but who refuses to turn around and look. By your level of logic and critical thinking you could just as well refuse to believe the electrical outlets in your house work and insist that the computer you use to submit your "questions" runs by magic.

Answer 9

There is no way to logically answer this question, so I'll try.

Why are you asking atheists? Do you really believe the earth is flat when we have pictures from space? Why don't you go see for yourself - take a trip AROUND the world. Get out and see the world and decide for yourself.

Answer 10

Hmm, anyone who asked this question is either mad or (what shud i say) devoid of knowledge

U dont seem to be a science student

Stars are countless, but 2 far away to help

Have u seen, u light a bulb to illuminate ur room?
Can that light illuminate a house in poor india!!

Grow up man