ST401385@BROWNVM.BITNET (03/06/86)
GL>> I don't quite understand your posting about defocussing due to
GL>> negative curvature being a solution to the Olber paradox.
GL>> The problem is with the total amount of energy;
REM> Wrong. The problem is the density of energy.
Sorry, that's what I meant; I misspoke.
REM>An infinite amount of
REM>energy spread into infinite space can have any arbitrary density
REM>depending on the fractal dimension of the generators ...
This is what I meant when I refered to the clumping of stars
such that the average density is zero. My question was not about
this, which I think I understand reasonably well. My question was
about your discussing "defocussing" due to negative curvature as
being another, different solution to the problem.
Message to "Josh Knight":
JK>I don't think clumping, no matter what its statistical characteristics
JK>can avoid the paradox.
You may not think it, but it is true none the less. Think some more.
Message to David desJardins:
DdJ> ... even if all rays intersected stars, it would be quite possible
DdJ> for most of the sky to appear dark.
DdJ> First, because light is quantized into photons and so most of the
DdJ> sky would still not be emitting a photon more than occasionally;
DdJ> second, because "dark" is a relative term,
DdJ> i.e. there is still some scattered light coming from parts of
DdJ> the sky that you see as "dark."
Wrong. Work it out. If the universe is flat, infinite
in time and space, and light does not lose energy traversing it (eg., is
not redshifted, then the 1/R2 attenuation of light exactly cancels the
R2 increase in number of stars per shell at distance R. The brightness
of the sky is thus the brightness of the surface of the average star:
ie., the sky is everywhere as bright as the sun. The sun emits plenty
of photons per second; the fact that light is quantized is irrelevant.
Darkness may be relative, but I don't think *anyone* will argue that
the surface of the sun is "Dark".
--Geoffrey A. Landis, Brown University
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