Proposed by Olber in 1823 = Why is the night sky dark?
The most up-to-date version of the Olber’s paradox = In a universe consisting of galaxies that are of infinite age and static, the accumulated light would be so intense to make the night sky bright1
The solution of the Olber’s paradox is that both assumptions are wrong:
- the universe is infinitely old
- the universe is static
One other proposed solution to Olber’s paradox was that there is star dust or some opaque matter that blocks the light from reaching us and making the night sky uniformly bright. However, if this was the case, then that opaque matter would eventually heat up and be as bright as the ambient light it was blocking not solving the problem
The most relative of the two assumptions is that the universe actually has a finite age. There is the horizon boundary (14.42 billion light years) after which the light has not had the time to reach us.
Footnotes
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Olber’s paradox in astronomy: history, nature, and resolution. P.S, Wesson. 1933. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43421027. ↩