The most frightening thing about space is darkness. Why is space so dark? Where has the light gone?

Most people have not experienced space travel firsthand, but from some images or image materials, we can also understand the general appearance of space, which is black.Astronauts have the most genuine feelings about the darkness of space, including Zhai Zhigang and Liu Yang from China

Most people have not experienced space travel firsthand, but from some images or image materials, we can also understand the general appearance of space, which is black.

Astronauts have the most genuine feelings about the darkness of space, including Zhai Zhigang and Liu Yang from China. Many astronauts vividly described the darkness of space in media interviews. So the question arises, why is space so dark? Space is not a vast abyss without sunlight, but its darkness is far greater than that of the abyss. This is not imagination, but what astronaut Liu Yang personally said to the media: "The surroundings are particularly dark, the darkness that cannot be seen to the bottom, and the abyss cannot be described.

This is very strange. There is no light in the abyss, but space is a place with abundant light sources.

The light of the sun can reach every corner of the solar system, and in distant cosmic space, there are also a large number of shining stars whose light will also be transmitted to the solar system. On weekdays, the background in the space image data we see is always dark, but in fact, that is not the case. Astronauts can see stars all over the sky when they are in space, and the reason why we can't see it is because the photographic equipment is not awesome enough. Since the sun shines and astronauts can see the stars all over the sky, why do they still feel unparalleled darkness?

Actually, this is because in space, light is light and black is black.

Space is an environment that approximates a vacuum, where unlike Earth, there are no gases or dust, so there is no reflection or scattering. On Earth, the reason why the day is so bright is not because the sun's rays are so dazzling, but because the Earth has an atmosphere, with dust and particles, where light can be freely reflected and scattered. For example, the blue sky on Earth is caused by the scattering effect of the atmosphere. Essentially, the reason we are able to see an object is because light shines on it and then reflects back into our eyes. The photosensitive cells in our eyes then convert the light signal into an electrical signal and transmit it to the brain, allowing the image to be displayed.

On the other hand, even if we are surrounded by light, as long as it does not enter our eyes, we naturally cannot see anything.

Space is a situation where there is nothing, no reflection or scattering, unless we look at a specific light source, such as the sun or other bright stars, in order to discover a little bit of light, and these lights are only light. In space, they cannot illuminate the surrounding environment. Without reflection and scattering, is space necessarily a darkness? It seems that this should not be the case either.

There are countless stars in the universe, although they are very far away from us, their light will one day shine here. Under the illumination of countless stars, even if there is no scattering or reflection, the universe should still be bright, not dark?

Yes, the universe should indeed be bright, not dark, but the space we see is pitch black, which indicates that the universe is different from what we think. The Olbers paradox states that a static, infinitely ancient universe with an infinite number of stars distributed in an infinite space would be bright rather than dark.

In the Olbers paradox, three clear conditions are given, namely a static universe, an infinitely ancient universe, and an infinite number of stars. If all three conditions are met, the universe must be bright.

But since the universe is dark, it means that at least one of the conditions is not met, and of course, it is also possible that none of the three conditions are met, which is indeed the case. The universe did not exist from the beginning. It began with the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and the universe after its birth was not static. It has been expanding, and the farther away it is from us, the faster the relative speed of expansion. Therefore, beyond 46.5 billion light years, the speed of light propagation cannot keep up with the speed of space expansion, and the light there will never arrive.

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