Olbers Paradox Essay

Olbers’ Paradox is one of the many topics of cosmology. In principle, there seems to be nothing surprising in the black color of the night. Earth turns on itself, so that part of the Earth is kept lit by the sun, while another part remains 'dark '. A priori this may seem like a correct answer, but it is something that is too short. The universe does not end in the Sun, and the amount of additional stars who accompanies us in the universe is estimated at the not inconsiderable figure of 3.2 × 10 ^ 22 stars.

Raised the dead of night, despite the seemingly obvious question, it is something that has a name in the scientific literature, being known as "The Paradox of Olbers". Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers was a German doctor who spent his nights to

Matter, as we conceive it today, did not exist after the Big Bang, because the temperature was too high for that. While trying to join protons and electrons, light continually crossed apart. Only when the universe had cooled to 3,000 K, the atoms are held together and the light was beginning to happen.

So when it gets dark, we see the background of the universe when it was still opaque. And it seems that the Olbers paradox would be resolved, but there is a point to clarify. Even before the existence of matter, the high temperature would have to 'burn ' emitting a light that today we see totally black.

The answer to this last question is the expansion of the universe. According to this theory the subject moves away from us, which makes the light that comes to us has become a long wavelength. This means that our eyes can not see, but which can be detected by other physical instruments that identify it as the famous cosmic background

But this does not justify it. Whether there is a star after the other, the assumption of uniform distribution (at that time there was no reason to think of a more privileged, more full of stars elsewhere) allows the existence of stars "next". This formal language, the stars are "dense" in the celestial sphere.

Only after Vesto Slipher, Hubble and others discovered in the second decade of this century that the universe was expanding, it could give a satisfactory explanation for the paradox.

One effect of the expansion of the universe is the redshift ("redshift") of all wavelengths. That means, among other things, that there is a loss of energy with distance; that is, that there is an "extra" loss of brightness proportional to 1 / r. The more distant, less bright than it was even in a static universe

But what really resolves the paradox is the same expansion. If the universe is expanding is that it is not infinite. It is not in either space or time, therefore could not be considered but a finite number of spherical shells. Finitude is key. It is true that all of the shells together provide brilliance, but only in the amount enough to let the night as it is ... at