I’m enclosing an article that poses a question that had never occurred to me before: Why is the night sky dark? According to the author of the article, Robert Cowen, “the traditional answer holds that the universe is expanding so fast that light from the distant stars is degraded and thinly spread.” Another theory suggests, “the darkness is better explained by the simple fact that the universe is of finite age. Galaxies have not had time to flood the sky with starlight.” Excuse me, but aren’t we overlooking the obvious here? –Bill, Nanaimo, British Columbia
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
This is one of those questions so bizarre that only serious drugs or an astronomer could be behind it. But it’s not as nutty as it may initially appear. We can rule out one obvious answer right off the bat: the night sky isn’t dark merely because the sun goes down. The stars alone ought to be enough to make the night sky intensely bright.
The light emitted by the most distant stars is so faint it’s below the threshold of vision. Forget it. You can’t see an individual glowing atom, but you can see zillions of them massed together in a candle flame. The same ought to hold true of a horde of distant stars.
So that’s why the night sky is dark. All right, it’s a complicated way of telling you what you might have guessed anyway. But sometimes the obvious ain’t.
This by no means negates the “sexually aroused female” theory of the word’s origin, for the odor of a woman in heat is symbolic of “positive energy” in its most primitive form. –Cree McCree, New York
