Olbers’s Paradox

• Olbers’s Paradox

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• 1. Olbers’s paradox is an argument showing that the sky in an infinite, static universe could not be dark.

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• 2. If stars and galaxies are distributed throughout space, then in whatever direction one looked, one should see a star. Yet, the night sky is dark because we see relatively few stars.

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• 3. The resolution of Olbers’s paradox—the reason the sky is dark—is based on the related ideas that the universe has a finite age and is expanding.