Day 712 of the Daily Poems. Having embraced the darkness with Fiona Clark, we now face the intriguing paradox of day in night, formulated elegantly by our poet today Alwyn Marriage. Why don’t the infinite stars completely cover our night sky? German astronomer Heinrich Olbers described the paradox in 1823. The answer may be that the expansion of the universe causes the energy of emitted light to be reduced through redshift.
Day in night
Olbers’ paradox
It’s estimated that between a hundred
and four hundred billion stars
make up our Milky Way,
spreading a shining white carpet
right across the sky.
Such numbers are insignificant compared
to the magnitude of other galaxies,
even before we start to imagine worlds
that might exist outside our universe.
But if the number of stars is infinite,
why don’t they completely cover
the finite spread of our night sky,
blocking out the darkness
and making it as light as day?
Alwyn Marriage