Today's thought was this:
When we look up into the night sky, we see stars and other light reflective objects such as the moon and nearby planets. But shouldn't the sky be simply a bright glow filled to the point of saturation with the ambient light from the trillions of stars not only in our galaxy but all the trillions of other galaxies?
I googled a brief synopsis of this question and found I'm not the first to ponder this.
The gist of my question is referred to as Olbers' Paradox. It's been kicked around for over 400 years in, no doubt, numerous salons and Algonquin-esque round-tables of brainy-types throughout the centuries. But it has only recently had "sufficient" scientific explanation.
Wikipedia gives one "short answer" is that it's attributed to the expansion of space which can cause the energy of emitted light to be reduced via redshift. More specifically, the extreme levels of radiation from the Big Bang have been redshifted to microwave wavelengths (1100 times lower than its original wavelength) as a result of the cosmic expansion, and thus form the cosmic microwave background radiation. This explains the relatively low light densities present in most of our sky despite the assumed bright nature of the Big Bang. The redshift also affects light from distant stars and quasars, but the diminution is only an order of magnitude or so, since the most distant galaxies and quasars have redshifts of only around 5 to 8.6.
Well, that kinda explains what happened to all the light from just after the Big Bang when the entire universe was in a plasma-like state. But I'm concerned with light sources eminently younger. Stars and galaxies of stars observable today (though, especially for the most distant sources, as they looked up to several billion years ago).
Other explanations include scattering of light by dust and other particulate matter, including the atmosphere when observing from the surface of Earth. Also the lack of the massive quantity of stars needed to make up for the decreased intensity of light through the inverse square law.
WRONG! When I ponder the paradox, it's not the light reduced to microwave wavelengths, or matter obstructions I wonder about. I wonder about the vast number of objects in the visible spectrum picked up by uber-powerful telescopes which can't be seen with the naked eye. The light is there. We know that from telescopic observation. We just can't see it.
Another article mentioned, almost as a side note, the biological limitations of our human eyes.
That, I think, is the most important factor!
So in essence, my opinion is that, in fact, the night sky is actually a bright glowing expanse.
It's a-blaze with luminosity. Has been and will be for billions of years.
We just don't see it. Our primitive little gooey ocular organs are too flawed to pick up on this fact.
So all these diversionary explanations are merely acts of denial. We, as a species, "ain't all that and a bag of potato chips" after all. I, for one, can handle the self-deprecation. I'll admit to the severe handicaps in our powers of observation coupled with our head-in-the-sand instincts and our naive hubris.
I'm just gonna go outside tonight, relax in a lounge chair and soak up some unseen rays.
Hope I don't get a star burn.