Why does space appear black?

[Grey Cloud]

Interesting thread gentlemen. If I may, I would like to contribute my two penneth.
I would venture to suggest that space appears black due to the limits (parameters) of our visual system. I am of the opinion that the EM spectrum extends indefinitely in both directions. Everything in the Universe reflects and absorbs some part of this 'light' (from some part of this extended spectrum).
The human eye acts as a filter in exactly the way as do your lungs and your stomach, for example. Your body takes in what it needs and exhales/expels/reflects that which it doesn't need. Everything in the Universe does this.
Your body as a whole does this with the light. For example, you cannot see ultra-violet 'light' but your body can absord it. Likewise with, say, x-rays (which the Earth reflects thus protecting us from them).
We tend to view our senses as five discrete functions or abilities but I think that ultimately they are parts of one 'sense' which is split into five.
Your body also reflects light and some of that light which you reflect will in turn be absorbed by something else.
This, in essence, is what astrology is about. These various vibrations/lights/energies being reflected from the stars and planets, in various permentations affect you for good or for ill.

"Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates".
"Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates".
"Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law".
The Kybalion.

If there were no sun, it would be night. Heraclitus Fr.99
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men, if they have souls that understand not their language. Heraclitus Fr.107

The entire cosmos is a complex matrix of sound and light vibrations. Every element in our world and every kingdom of beings derives its essential nature from the keynote resonating as the basis of its consciousness. All primary questions concerning origins and destiny turn upon the rate of vibration, the plane of matter and state of consciousness, and corresponding conceptions of space, time and motion. Beyond the planes of manifestation and prior to the primal differentiation of spirit and matter lies the one invariant and all-potential vibration of the Paramatman, which through its radiation gives periodic form and substance to the septenary universe. Ultimately, this is a purely transcendental process entirely exempt from rational analysis. It is necessary to discard the false notion that each human being is somewhat like a machine or a self-contained box. As the universal vibration of the One Life is at the core of every living form, no being in the universe is entirely dependent upon any external source of motion. Owing to the transcendental commonality of consciousness, all beings are inevitably involved in a universal system of mutual interdependence."

Raghavan Iyer, "Resonance and Vibration"

Junglelord, as 'the local medical professional and anatomy expert and one who is very up to speed on holographic consciousness' I thought this image might interest you.
From:
http://www.princeton.edu/~his291/Cartesian_Vision.html

Cartesian vision

This woodcut from Descartes' 1644 Principles of Philosophy diagrams Descartes' theory of vision and its interaction with the pineal gland. Descartes believed that light rays impressed subtle particles into the eyes. The image was then transmitted to the pineal gland, which served as the nexus between mind and body. In this sketch the external stimulus is translated into an act of will (pointing) by the pineal gland.

See also:
Theory of Colours (Goethe)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours

[StevenO]

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

This can be understood from seeing that "phase aligned" particles move in time instead of space. So, as Mead for instance explained their time distance is zero. independent of their distance in space.

I have some trouble with the holographic interpretation. It can be shown that matter can only exist in three dimensions. Since there are as many time dimensions as space dimensions my interpretation would be that the holographic dimensions are actually the two missing time dimensions.

[Antone]

Frankly, I've always been extremely puzzled by why anyone would ever have thought Olber's Paradox was actually a paradox in the first place. Even if you allow that space is infinite and not expanding (even if it is contracting). Even if you allowed that space didn't contain dust, and was completely full of perfect reflectors and light transmitters, etc. Even if you allowed that the human eye was capable of infinite sensititivity and even if you allowed that the light could accumulate like it does on a peice of film... Even if all of these factors worked to product the fullest amount of light possible, I still don't see why anyone would think the night sky would be as bright as the day sky.

First, we should look at the meaning of the inverse square law. (which I give as much to confirm that my understanding is correct as I do to inform those people who might not be familiar with it).
As I understand it, the inverse square law means that as you double your distance from a light source you receive only 1/4 as much light from it. What this means is that if we assumed (for the sake of simplifying the argument) that all stars are the same size/intensity as our sun, then if the suns in question were twice the distance from us that our own sun is it would take four suns to give us the same amount of light that our sun provides. At 3 times the distance it would require 16 suns; and at 4 times the distance it would require 64 suns to equal the same light.

Now, we can create the following table to chart the number of stars necessary to provide equivalent light at various multiples of distance.

Distance.................# Stars
2.........................4
3.........................16
4.........................32
5.........................256
6.........................1 x 103
7.........................4 x 103
8.........................16 x 103
9.........................65 x 103
10.........................262 x 103
11.........................1 x 106
12.........................4 x 106
13.........................17 x 106
14.........................67 x 106
15.........................268 x 106
16.........................1 x 109
17.........................4 x 109
18.........................17 x 109
19.........................68 x 109
20.........................274 x 109
21.........................1 x 1012

The numbers are rounded off, of course... but notice the approximate pattern. Every five doublings gives us 3 additional 0's added onto our exponential figures.

Now, as I understand it, the following are some astrological facts:

1. The distance to the sun is about 94,500,000 miles.
2. light travels at about 700 million miles an hour.
3. Thus, it takes light about 8.5 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth.
4. The nearest star is about 4.3 light years away, which means that it is more than 250,000 times further away from us than the sun. (4.3 yrs x 364 days x 24 hours x 60 m)/8.5 m)
5. Finally, it is estimated that there are only about 200,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy.

Now if we divide 250,000 (the distance of the nearest star) by [5] (the number of multiples needed to add [3] to the exponent of the scientific notation of our chart) we get an estimation of the number of zeros that we would need to add to give the number of stars that would be needed to equal the light of our sun. My figuring puts this number at 50,000. That's 50 thousand additional zeros--not 50 thousand stars.

In other words, at 4.3 light years distance, [1 x 1050,000 stars] would be needed in one area of the sky in order to equal the intensity of our sun.

Since our galaxy contains only about 200,000,000,000 stars, the number of stars needed falls about
1 x 1049,989 stars short of what would be needed to equal our sun.

And this number is actually extremely conservative, since since the milky way is about 100,000 light years in diameter and the sun is at one end of that body. Thus, most of the stars in it are many light years further away than the nearest star that I used for my diameter of 4.3 light years distance.

Now, even if I've misconstrued the meaning of the inverse square law, and the table should have looked more like this:

Distance.................# Stars
2.........................4
4.........................16
8.........................32
16.........................256

It seems to me that the light is still reducing in intensity far faster than the number of stars are increasing in number.

[Antone]

An easy way to visualize how this works is to think about a camp fire at a havily populated campsite.

Close to your own fire, it provides an ample amount of light by which to see and keep warm. If you stand too close you'll begin to feel too hot. On the other hand, if you venture out to look for firewood, the fire quickly becomes considerably less bright as you move away from it. Before long, all you can see is a small globe of light. It provides no appreciable light by which to see, but you can still see it if you are looking in its direction for quite some distance.

Now, imagine that you are at a campsite that is split by a river, and on the other shore there are hundreds of campfires scattered about. Even if those campsites were very close together, the light from them would not be enough to equal the light from your own fire when you are close to it. Even if the whole side of the mountain (on the other side of the river) were ablaze with a rampaging forest fire, the light from that would likely not be as great as the light from your [positively tiny by comparison] camp fire.

There is virtually no difference between this scenario and the night time stars.

[Antone]

Another way to think of how this works is to consider a philosophical puzzle that is sometimes called the Race Course Paradox. The original version of this was presented by Zeno, but my version goes like this:

A runner desires to run a race from [point A] to [point B]. But according to Zeno, this is impossible because the runner must reach a halfway point in the race, leaving a half yet to be run. Then he must reach a [halfway point of the half that still remains to be run], leaving a quarter of the race yet to be run. Each time he completes half of the course that yet remains to be run there is yet another half that remains to run. Since there are an infinite number of these halves, the race can never be completed. According to Zeno, anyway.

What Zeno failed to recognize is that while the number of halves is indeed infinite, the size of each [half of the last half] also becomes increasingly small. If it were possible to reach the final [infinite half] we would find that that half was also [infinitely small].

It seems to me that a similar situation is occurring in Olber's Paradox. The main difference is this: the racecourse involves
two inverse aspects that are changing at a uniform rate. Every time we [half the remaining half]--in essence creating a [whole with a larger number of halves]--we also create a [smaller unit]. And the rate at which the halves increase is exactly proportional to the rate at which the units become smaller.

In essence, the halving of the racecourse creates the following sequence:
1/2 , 1/4 , 1/8 , 1/16 , 1/32...

The sum of this series, is [1], because the rate of increase in parts is exactly proportional the in decrease in the size of each part.

But if one aspect increases or decreases faster than the other, then the sum can be a number that is either larger or smaller than 1. This is in effect what is happening in Olber's Paradox. Yes, theoretically, there might be an infinite number of lights all stacked up on top of one another, but the rate at which those lights are accumulating is much lower than the rate at which the intensity of each light is decreasing. Thus, no mater how many lights are stacked up on top of one another, they can never become greater than a very small amount of light.

Here's a mathematical presentation:

lets say that [1] is the light intensity of the sun.
Now suppose the first star has an intensity of [.1] (That is extremely high, but this is just an exercise in logic.)
And suppose that the second star has an intensity of [.01], and the next star has an intensity of [.001]. Etc.

All of the stacked up stars together will only equal [.1111111...]
no matter how many additional stars we stack up, (and thus how many decimal places we add), it will never increase the intensity to [.12] let alone to [1.0]

Now, occasionally there may be two stars close enough that at a certain decimal place we must double or tripple the number, but at the most optimistic, this would only produce a number something like [.11211121231121211113...]

Am I missing something important... or is this not pretty obvious?

[Antone]

Okay, I have observed that I had a critical error in my understanding of the Inverse Square Law, However, an accurate understanding of this law does not seem to invalidate the basic principles on which my argument was based. It simply makes it a little less obvious. So here is my revised argument.

The Inverse Square Law works by squaring the distance multiple. So if we are 5x as far away, the light is 1/25 as intense.

Once again, since the closest star is 250,000 x further away than our sun, we square 250,000. This is the number of stars needed to equal our own sun at a distance of 4.3 light years away--the distance of the closest star. The number is
62.5 million stars. This is quite a bit less than the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, but it should be remembered that the majority of the stars are much further away than 4.3 light years. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, and our solar system is fairly close to one of the sparsely populated ends. So, to use extremely conservative numbers, I think we can estimate that the Earth is about 25,000 light years from the edge of the Milky Way and the highest concentration of stars are at the center of the Milky Way, So the average distance of all the stars would be at least 25,000 light years from the earth.

We can find out how many multiples further away this is than the 4.3 light years to the closest star by dividing 250,000 light years by 4.3 light years. This gives 58,139.53 times--I'll round to 58 thousand times further. And since 4.3 light years was 250,000 times further than our sun, we can multiply 58,000 by 250,000 to get how much further away the average star in the Milky way is than our own sun. This is 14,500,000,000 times further. Now, we can square this number to derive the number of stars that would be needed in the milky way to equal the intensity of our sun. The answer I get is:
[210,250,000,000,000,000,000] or [210,250,000,000 billion stars].

Now, while this number is vastly smaller than the original number I proposed, it is still much larger than the 200 billion stars that the Milky Way is believed to contain.

This brings us back to my concluding argument before. if you divide [200 billion] by [210,250,000,000] you get a decimal number that represents how much light the Milky Way provides compared to the Sun, when the sun is represented by a 1.0.
My calculator won't do this number, so I have to figure in my head and I'm a bit dislexic, so my decimals may be of by a few places. But I get [.00000000095] which we can round up to [.000000001].

Now, we can repeat the same basic process for all the galaxies in our cluster, but the distance between galaxies makes the distance between the stars in the Milky Way look positively tiny. So even if there are many more galaxies in our cluster than there are stars in the Milky Way, the sum total of all the these galaxies would still be a number that is much, much smaller than [.000000001]. Next we could add the light from all the clusters and then all the super clusters, etc. But at each step, the added light would become vanishingly smaller and smaller. So it does not add significantly to the total light.

I know this argument is a bit complicated... and I bungled the first post... and I may have bungled the math details again this time, as it is very late and I'm tired... but I am interested in knowing if anyone can rebut the basic principle of my argument. Please let me know if you can find an error in my figuring.

[nick c]

Antone:

In my opinion, you are correct- there is simply not enough light to be sensed by the human eye.
You have basically put the [url2=http://www.kronia.com/thoth/ThVIII02.txt]Don Scott[/url2] argument (also Junglelord's not enough photons) in different words, and are arriving at the same conclusion from a different angle. All the esoteric arguments concerning the true nature of EM radiation, shifting of wavelength and reemission after absorption, wave vs particle, etc etc. (while interesting and possibly true) are irrelevant. If there were no dust or absorbing medium in between our eyes and the light source, the sky would still appear black. The bottom line is that our minds just cannot perceive the light due to the limitations of our sensory apparatus- the human eye. The human eye is more or less limited to seeing stars up to the 6th magnitude, and light of 7th or greater magnitude is just simply not visible, and it does not accumulate or add up.
This thread has been interesting reading! The analogy between Olber's Paradox and Zeno's Paradox is valid. They are both mathematical conundrums, or as Scott stated:

Olber's Paradox is not a paradox at all if you look at it correctly. It is
yet another example of theoretical mathematics applied incorrectly to a real
world phenomenon.

Nick

[webolife]

Do we need a new thread for the question,
Why does light form images?
I'd like to see someone give a clear explanation of light's image-forming capability that does not involve treating light as rays. I'll debate this until I'm blue in the face, or until someone can show me how objects can be seen, ie distinguished, by any mechanism of waving or particle action under "current" physics models.

[Jewels Vern]

The fallacy is in the assumption that the light must equal the intensity of our sun. The paradox only specifies that it must equal the intensity of the light we see in the initial volume.

[Antone]

there is simply not enough light to be sensed by the human eye.
You have basically put the [url2=http://www.kronia.com/thoth/ThVIII02.txt]Don Scott[/url2] argument ... in different words... The bottom line is that our minds just cannot perceive the light due to the limitations of our sensory apparatus- the human eye.

Thanks for your kind words, but I'm not sure I entirely agree.

It seems to me that if the human eye was infinitely sensitive in the way necessary to make the paradox work, all light would have to appear the same. There would be no such thing as a [bright] or a [dim] light.

I believe it makes more sense to suppose that, even if the eye was infinitely sensitive, the night sky would still appear dark. It wouldn't literally appear black... but then it doesn't really appear black now--rather it is simply a very dark shade of gray. The only difference would be our ability to discern between those shades of [very dark gray].

This is why I avoid the sensitivity argument. I do not think having infinitely sensitive eyes would change what we see appreciably. What we see is simply less precise. Instead of saying that the shade of gray is [.93... black] or alternately [.07... white], we say that it is [1.0... black] or [0.0... white].

This is an over simplification, of course, since it ignores all other colors...

Just as a holograph that is produced using only half of the holo-film, our perception of black is "fuzzier" (or less precise) than it would be if we had infinite sensitivity... but the basics of what we see is still more or less the same.

[Antone]

Do we need a new thread for the question,
Why does light form images?
I'd like to see someone give a clear explanation of light's image-forming capability that does not involve treating light as rays.

To understand this, you need to understand two things:
First, the nature of a holograph. The following link is one of the best I have found for understanding the basic nature of a hologram and how it is related to the nature of light and the way the brain interprets it.
http://www.acsa.net/bcngroup/jponkp/

Here is a brief excerpt:

The basic idea of a hologram can be understood without even considering the hologram... The idea is simply that each part contains some information of the whole. ... the information (or features) are not localized, but distributed. ... consider the following thought experiments (demonstrations). As will be demonstrated, light is in the holographic domain before it gets transformed (focused) by a lens.

Demonstration #1. Remove the converging lens in a slide projector that forms the image. Place a slide in the projector and project the light onto a screen. No image will form. Technically, the light incident on the screen is in a holographic form. Each point on the screen is receiving information from every point from the slide. If a converging lens is placed at a location between the screen and the slide projector an image can be formed on the screen. The lens can now be moved to new locations in a plane cutting through the light path to the screen and in each case a complete image is formed (Taylor, 1978).

Demonstration #2. The above principle can be demonstrated ... if you look at an object ... then tilt your head to the side, you can still see the object. The light incident on your eye in both positions was sufficient to form the whole image.

Demonstration #3. Take a pair of binoculars. Just look through one side focusing at a distant object. Now place your fingers in front of the lens so that only light coming from in-between your fingers enters the monocular. You will still see the whole image. If you bring your fingers together so that the light enters only through tiny slits, the whole image will still be present, only dimmer (and there will be some loss of resolution) ... the light incident at the surface of the lens at any point is in a holographic form.

Demonstration #4. A pinhole camera represents a special case where an image can be formed without using a lens ... This demonstrates the rudimentary idea of the whole being included in a part (the part being the area of the pinhole). All of the information necessary to produce the image is contained in the area of the pinhole.

The point is that trying to explain the formation of an image in terms of a ray is vastly oversimplified. In reality, the image is not contained in the ray--or in the particle aspect of light. It is contained in the wave aspect--and this is only possible because of the interference pattern that is created when various waves of light collide.

A holograp can be understood as two reciprocal parts. The holographic image which we can understand when we see. It is what we call a hologram. But there is also a peice of holographic film, which we do not understand as an image when we see it. It looks like the ripples in a pond when you throw in a handful of pebbles. The information that forms the image is contained in both the image and the peice of film, but when that information is distributed throughout the whole (the way it is in the peice of film) we say that it is in the holographic domain.

Another complication is introduced because although the lens of the eye would seem to convert the light out of the holographic domain and into an actual image, there is a good deal of experimental data that suggest that the image is encoded in the brain in it's holographic domain, so to speak. In other words, the opical centers of the brain are in essence very effective holographic analyzers.

This again is probably oversimplified again, but the point is that the brain can respond to non-image, holographic imput as if it were an actual image. It is the brain's ability to do this that allows us to create the "image" of reality in our minds.

[Grey Cloud]

Antone,
I'm not sure if I understood much of that but that would be down to the way my mind works rather than your post per se.
You wrote

It is the brain's ability to do this that allows us to create the "image" of reality in our minds.

I would argue that it is the mind's ability to do this that allows us to create the image of reality in our brains.

A couple of questions (for anyone)
1. Why do I see my monitor a couple of feet in front of me and not in my brain where the image is formed?
2. How can I 'see' things when I dream?

[rduke]

A couple of questions (for anyone)
1. Why do I see my monitor a couple of feet in front of me and not in my brain where the image is formed?
2. How can I 'see' things when I dream?

Ahhh to discuss my favorite topics on my favorite place on the web..

What a glorious moment.

I will make it as brief as I can so we do not stray too far off topic... (even if all of these topics are intimately connected when you get down to it)

1. I think the root of this question is the sole reason why the first Matrix film had such an impact... Perception being what it is, we are constantly bombarded with stimuli from all directions, and in the same way our thalamus filters this stimuli before it reaches our frontal lobes.. it is the same way we perceive the 3rd dimension we are consciously aware of at this moment. Akin to observing electrons and watch them change their behavior when we do so.

We see what we can handle to witness... see reality skewed too much from the static norm,... and typically you have a mental break... and are placed in a rubber room.

Reality is what we perceive in front of us, everything being energy in nature... we literally live in a grand holodeck.

In order to keep the experiance going on, you must perceive reality in a structured way... we really do have an extraordinary piece of hardware in our craniums...

2. This is one of my favorite of favorites... I honestly love this topic.. but I must keep it brief or I will be writing 10 pages.

When you dream you 'see' via your pineal gland. It has water and rods and cones in it, and it is exactly what the ancients were referring to as the third eye for thousands of years... It took modern civilization all this time to simply discover this, however because it brings up way to many uncomfortable questions, on the whole the information is ignored... in the typical modern scientific church way of doing things.

As the discovery uncovers the really real spiritual... not their Discovery channel plastic version.

In the higher evolved bodies like the ones human beings possess.. the pineal is deep in the brain, in the actual middle of your head, in the lower aka more simplified versions like lizards and so forth the pineal is much closer to the surface, in fact .. reptiles pineal have a iris of sorts and can detect light directly.

Interesting to note light is one of the triggering mechanisms of the human pineal gland as well.

Mine can detect objects placed near my head, and it lets me know by forming a weird pressure on my forehead... you can do it to yourself.. or have a loved one do it to you... The effect for me is especially strong when the object is metal.

Lay back and close/shield your eyes with a bandanna and tell them to move to a fro from your forehead... you should feel it.. Unless you are a troglodyte..

[Antone]

A couple of questions (for anyone)
1. Why do I see my monitor a couple of feet in front of me and not in my brain where the image is formed?
2. How can I 'see' things when I dream?

I believe the answer to both questions is simply that the mind processes our data holographically.

One of the fundamental characteristics of a hologram is that it creates an "illusion" of depth where non exists.
For instance, a hologram, which is produced from a flat peice of film, produces an object that is 3-dimensional (or in some cases merely appears to be 3-dimensional).

Similarly, the brain takes the image that is projected onto a more or less flat surface (the back of our eyeballs) and produces from it a mental image that seems to have depth. This is much more than just our stereo vision.

Two eyes helps us to judge how far away something is, but it isn't the only thing that gives us the sense that an object is far away.

Dreams are merely the same kind of mental activity produced without an external stimuli.

It is also worth noting that all of our senses are holographic in nature. So for instance, special techniques can be used to make a sound appear to be coming from behind us, when in fact the speakers are in front of us.

Similarly, a person can feel a limb that has been amputated. Even when a limb hasn't been ampuated, we have an innate understanding of where our feelings occur in space. So for instance, if someone pokes me in the leg, I can reach right to the spot where the poke occurred, without having to look down at the spot to "see" where its at.

Similarly, vibrating pads can be used to make a subject feel the vibration in a place that is not occupied by their body. For instance, a vibrating pad is placed on each knee. Then by changing the rates at which the pads vibrate, the subject can experience the vibrating on the left knee, the right knee--or even at the empty space between the knees.

Other experimental results suggest that smell, and taste are also holographic in nature.

[webolife]

Antone,
I disagree with your holographic processing supposition.
It is simply not true that the retinae receive the image information in holographic form. The information is imaged on the retina by the combination of cornea, pupil and lens focusing the light rays through a pinhole format... then sent to the occipital lobe via the optic chiasma, etc... then "perceived" by the brain. The brain is indeed amazing in all respects of the word, but cannot be capable of the holographic processing you are suggesting. You betrayed your true reliance on light rays by using the term "light path". Interference of waves through a double slit can be shown to be not happening, but nonetheless gives no proper theory for image formation. The spectrum is indeed a holographic image produced by the convergence of rays of light through a point, by whatever means... raindrop, lens or pinhole, prism, or simple an edge. The spectrum is the precise image of the light field pressure gradient about the central line of sight. Wavefronts cannot produce this. Nor particles... at least in the scenario that includes Heisenberg's uncertain premise.