Why does space appear black?

[robinson]

Yes. So, if our own Galaxy appears mostly black, then it isn't hard to imagine the rest of the very very distant objects, would also appear black.

[junglelord]

It really depends on what position you view the galaxy. From within the galaxy looking headlong into the spiral arms, the dust actually causes the darkness you speak of. This is not the same for example when we view the Andromada galaxy from our vantage point. This is what I have always been taught.

[robinson]

Funny you should mention that. It was my next example. Our nearest Galaxy, which in some areas, is a solid mass of stars, some very bright, doesn't look that bright. If nothing was blocking the radiant energy from those stars, it would shine as bright as the sun. Obviously either distance effects light, or matter is absorbing the light before it reaches us.

If only a little light was being absorbed, it should still outshine the moon at night, much like this enhanced picture - http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061228.html

But it is a weak source of light. Even outside our atmosphere. So something is absorbing most of the light from distant objects. According to Mainstream theory (Olber's paradox) this can't be happening. (all following quotes are from the Wikipedia article)

An alternative explanation which is sometimes suggested by non-scientists is that the universe is not transparent, and the light from distant stars is blocked by intermediate dark stars or absorbed by dust or gas, so that there is a bound on the distance from which light can reach the observer.

However, this reasoning alone would not resolve the paradox given the following argument: According to the second law of thermodynamics there can be no material hotter than its surroundings that does not give off radiation and at the same time be uniformly distributed through space. Energy must be conserved, per the first law of thermodynamics. Therefore, the intermediate matter would heat up and soon reradiate the energy (possibly at different wavelengths). This would again result in intense uniform radiation as bright as the collective of stars themselves, which is not observed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olber%27s_ ... Absorption

To make it simple, what I suggested is countered with - "This would again result in intense uniform radiation as bright as the collective of stars themselves, which is not observed."

So, what is happening? Obviously our own Galaxy has most of the light blocked. Yet the dust (and other matter) isn't glowing with "intense uniform radiation as bright as the collective of stars themselves".

It seems obvious that somebody is wrong here. And more obvious that "empty space" isn't empty at all. It is also obvious that what is absorbing the light is not glowing from the energy absorbed. Or is it?

"The redshift and expanding space hypothesized in the Big Bang model would by itself explain the darkness of the night sky, even if the Universe were infinitely old."

No, because neither apply to our own Galaxy, or Andromeda. They are too close and not effected by either redshift or expanding space. Yet both these nearby sources of light do not shine as bright as the sun, even though a lot of them should. Something has to be absorbing the light, and not re-radiating it.

[robinson]

Looking at the sources for the Wikipedia article:

There are many possible explanations which have been considered. Here are a few:

1.There's too much dust to see the distant stars.
2. The Universe has only a finite number of stars.
3. The distribution of stars is not uniform. So, for example, there could be an infinity of stars,
but they hide behind one another so that only a finite angular area is subtended by them.
4. The Universe is expanding, so distant stars are red-shifted into obscurity.
5. The Universe is young. Distant light hasn't even reached us yet.

The first explanation is just plain wrong. In a black body, the dust will heat up too. It does act like a radiation shield, exponentially damping the distant starlight. But you can't put enough dust into the universe to get rid of enough starlight without also obscuring our own Sun. So this idea is bad.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/R ... lbers.html

This reasoning, that any matter that blocks starlight, or sunlight, will also glow, is an obvious fallacy. It is also absurd that the dust far away from our own Solar System would block out sunlight.

Examples are easy to find. The asteroid belt, which has been absorbing or blocking not only sunlight, but all other starlight, is not glowing. After billions of years of blocking or reflecting light. Most of the matter there is not glowing as bright as the sun, in fact, most of it doesn't emit any light at all. That we can see. Correct?

If matter that close to a star (our sun) hasn't started glowing, after billions of years of absorbing light, far more intense that starlight, why would anyone think dust far away from any star would glow? Where do they get this stuff from?

The second reasoning, is just stupid. Dust (or other matter) between stars, or between galaxies, would not in any way block out sunlight. Why would somebody write such nonsense? Or in this case, why would Scott I. Chase write that? And why has nobody called him on it?

[junglelord]

Oh I don't know. The Andromada galaxy is pretty bright to my eyes, even without a pair of binolculars. In binolculars, WOW, its really clear and quite distinct. Bright is a relative term of course, I am not strictly speaking of astronomical units here.

[robinson]

It is seven times a large as the full moon. If it had anywhere near the brightness of the moon, it would dominate the night sky. Yet the moon is very dim compared to sunlight. Since Andromeda is moving towards us at 300Km a second, there is no loss from red shift, or expanding space.

So why is it so dark? Where did the light go?

[junglelord]

Distance is the simple answer I would think. The moon is quite bright to me.

[Heftruck]

Admittably, I haven't read through the whole seven pages. Admittably, I don't have any degree in science. But this is how I currently understand it.

What is space and what is matter? They are by definition each other opposites. Where there is space, there is no matter. Where there is matter, there is no space. By this insight, I suspect that light is a form of matter. If it weren't, it would be space, meaning it wouldn't be there, wouldn't exist and we naturally wouldn't see it.

Where does light come from and how does it behave? When observing light, there are three things we notice. First, it has a point of origin. If we'd move closer to this point, we'd see more of it. If we'd move away from it, we'd see less of it. This is our second observation. Light diminishes over distance. Moreover, it diminishes uniformly from its point of origin. Thus, light behaves, at any given point, as a uniformly expanding sphere. If for some reason the supply of light seizes to be, for instance by throwing the switch of our bedside lamp, there are no more expanding spheres of light to continually illuminate our environment, in this case our bedroom. The spheres that did illuminate our environment, are long gone. This concludes our third observation. Light is a form of matter that moves.

Why is that important? If light is a form of matter which continually expands as a sphere, then the distance between the particles that make up the sphere, will grow larger and larger as they distance themselves from their point of origin. Unavoidably, at some point there won't be any particles left to expand into a sphere. I'm not entirely sure what happens then, but I'm tempted to say that by that time, all of the particles of light have become a form of matter that, while invisible, could well be the building blocks of our universe.

Because of how eyes work, namely absorbing particles that bounced off other objects, we can now explain why space looks black. It is not because of a lack of objects for particles of light to bounce off and onto to, but because of the lack of particles of light themselves, that we only see darkness (which, by the way, isn't the same thing as black). It is only when we create devices that bring the particles closer together, that we can form clearer pictures of lesser illuminated environments. This is how night vision goggles and telescopes work.

There is one vital requirement about this concept. Light as a particle. I'm purposely avoiding talking about waves because I view them as mathematical methods as opposed to concepts of physical reality.

I'm not sure if I added something valuable to the thread, but I hope I did.

[webolife]

Back to Antone's post from a couple pages back:

webolife wrote:
You continue to refer to the image as being somehow "carried" by the ray or wavefront, which I don't get...
Antone:
Don't get too hung up on the word "carried". Saying that the ray "carries the image" is like saying, "The screen carries the words of this sentence." The way I see it, your array also carries the image as well... if it didn't there is no way that we could see the image, because there would be no image there to see. Saying that something carries the image is just another way of saying that it is the medium that holds the image.

I would say the rays diagrams that describe imaging are actually correct representations of the field geometry that produces the image, and that without rays, no wavefront explanations can work. Olber's paradox [which applies to wave explanations for light imaging] puts the "imaging information" on all points of the wavefront equally, and all "point sources" of the alleged light-emitting object, such as that distant star, would be "sending" their particular wavefronts at the same time. In addition all other points nearby and afar are sending their wavefronts to our eye and generally speaking by the time they "reach" us those wavefronts are planar, and virtually indistinguishable from each other as far as the brief trip to our retina is concerned. Nothing is imageable by this plan, only a featureless blur. No blackness of space, and no bright dots either.

[webolife]

From Antone's note:

webolife wrote:
...No problem with the little image produced inside the wider blur from the projector...
Antone:
I'm not following how you can suppose that the "little image produced by the projector" isn't a problem for your array of vectors, unless the image is spread uniformly throughout the whole array. And if that is the case, then I don't necessarily see any significant difference between your array and my "wave front".

The effective aspect of the vector array is that each ray has a unique angular relationship to the central line of sight. When focused by a pinhole or any slit version of same, this relationship is laid out against the retina, film or screen according to that ordering, hence the detailed image, and in the case of a diffraction grating system evinced as the holographic image of the spectrum of the light source/sink.

[webolife]

From Antone again:

webolife wrote:
...Looking directly through the slit toward a light source/sink, you see the customary image of the ambient "picture" just as you would without the slit, but in addition the slit arrays the pressure gradient of the light field which appears to the sides...
Antone:
I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say here, but I'm assuming by "slit" you're referring to the double-slit set up--otherwise I'm not sure what the point is. And you're suggesting that what happens to "blur the image" is that the array becomes "composed" of two "images" and/or sources of light. One source of light is the [image that we would normally see] and the other source of light is the "pressure gradient of the light field which appears to the sides". I'm not entirely sure what this means, but it sounds suspiciously like my claim that the reason the light takes on the holographic aspect is because light coming from a different angle interfers with the image carrying ligh in question.
Again, while there are certain to be differences in the details of what we believe, it seems to me that we may simply be using different language to describe (more-or-less) the same process.

It doesn't matter what kind of lens, pinhole or slit, whether from a camera obscura, spectroscope, or single/double-slit diffraction/interference setup. My point and insistence contrarily is that no interference [at least in the Youngian wave-theory sense] is taking place at all... rather the precise alignment of the rays via the pinhole/slit allows for the image of the object to be preserved as precisely as the limitations of the pinhole/slit parameters. Each unique section of the object toward which the viewing device is directed, with its rays precisely arrayed according to their angular relationship to the central line of sight, is preserved by the geometric placement of the pinhole, or focal point of the lens, into that line of sight. In the case of the spectroscope, and other slit devices, this allows for the light field pressure gradient radial and concentric to the central line of sight to be precisely imaged as well, down to the spectral lines [light or dark] that characterize the very atomic structure of the star, or what ever light source/sink, being observed. That atomic structure is mostly due to the electronic configuration[s] of the atom[s] in question, the net voltage drop of which is what is responsible for changing the light field that our retina is on the local periphery of. Across the universe, the light field is instantly changed as the electron energy level is centropically altered, we "feel" the tug at our retina, or the silver iodide crystals on the film of our camera, and the star is observed. All other [dyed] objects we see either absorb or reflect these rays according to optical ray geometry, altering the light characteristics somewhat because of their own unique chemistries.

When we see the star, it is distinguishable from the "blackness" around it by simple geometry. The geometry of rays.
I say that this is because light is rays, vectors of force/pressure directed toward the centroid of the field, the light source as a sink.

I appreciate your willingness to consider this as just another way of describing the same stuff, ie an alternative theory, and your patience with my long hiatus since your questions.