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Regarding Olber's paradox, would an infinite number of stars really imply the sky would be uniformly bright? Why couldn't (say) the following alternative explanations work?

(a) The universe is infinite, but has been (and will always be) stretching faster than would allow light from galaxies too far away to ever reach us.

(b) The universe is infinite and not even stretching, but there is enough (dark?) matter in it to eventually block any ray of light coming from infinitely far away.



I think (a) could work, but in (b), if matter were absorbing light for an infinite span of time, it would eventually heat up and glow itself. “Dark” matter does not directly interact with electromagnetism aka light, so wouldn’t block it.


Ah great point, thanks!




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