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> even with a powerful telescope stars don't fill up your entire field of view. Suppose the experiment is repeated on a black pixel from the Deep Field image,
by jessermeyer 6y ago
> even with a powerful telescope stars don't fill up your entire field of view.
Suppose the experiment is repeated on a black pixel from the Deep Field image, and another swell of stars are observed, hinting at a kind of fractal distribution.
Were the universe eternal and static, why could this pattern not repeat indefinitely in infinite time, space and matter? The paradox seems to assume a kind of infinite level of sensitivity of the observer.
- avian 6y agoNo, the paradox as described in the Wikipedia article doesn't assume the infinite level of sensitivity. The figure explains it visually - the further away you go from the observer, the more stars you capture in your camera's field of view and the apparent brightness stays the same. The 1/r^2 term for light intensity is cancelled by the r^2 for the number of stars. It's interesting think what an experimental result you describe would imply. It either contradicts the nature of light or that we're in the center of a cloud of stars where the density of stars falls with distance from us.
- jessermeyer 6y agoThanks for spelling it out. Makes more sense now.