Re: The Big Bang

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
04 Nov 1997 14:50:27 +0100


Greg Butler <gsb1997@ix.netcom.com> writes:

> While I have no idea on whether the universe is infinitely large or not,
> an answer to this "paradox" seems a bit obvious. Imagine you have a star,
> and a senser right next to it. You would be reading a great deal of energy
> from the sensor. Now, move the sensor several light years away. You would
> read a great deal less energy, since most of the energy from the star would
> be radiating away from the sensor. Basically, all that energy from an
> infinite amount of stars would be radiating away into an infinte amount of
> space. That's why our skies would be dark in an infinite universe.

No. The amount of radiation you get from a star decreases with the
square of the distance. But the number of stars grows with the square
of the distance, so the total radiation from a given distance is
approximately constant. This means that in an infinite universe the
radiation diverges.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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