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There's no reason to believe the universe is infinite nor that stars are evenly distributed throughout its volume. So "the number of stars increases as r^2" is
by rdiddly 11y ago
There's no reason to believe the universe is infinite nor that stars are evenly distributed throughout its volume. So "the number of stars increases as r^2" is the part that doesn't hold and is causing the paradox.
- mannykannot 11y agoThis is Kepler's theory, and it gets into philosophical trouble, as cosmologists generally take it as axiomatic that the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and so don't have much time for theories that depend on us being in a special place in the universe. A universe having a lower density of stars everywhere above some radius from Earth does put us in a special place, is hard to reconcile with universal laws, and there is no empirical evidence for it. An explanation that derives from the universe evolving over time, however, has none of the philosophical problems and does have supporting empirical evidence.
- pdonis 11y ago> There's no reason to believe the universe is infinite nor that stars are evenly distributed throughout its volume. There is if you believe General Relativity is correct as applied to the universe as a whole. And if you don't, you have no model at all with which to make any predictions about what we should observe, so there's no reason to believe anything.