(10)    Thu 20 Jul 95 23:32
By: Hector Plasmic
To: AL SCHROEDER
Re: Re: Olbers' Paradox
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@EID:a1b7 1ef4bc00
@SPTH: Fidonet#1:380/16
@MSGID: Fidonet#1:380/16 300ed9f5
 AS>>> A 19th century atheist could say the universe had always existed, ad
 AS>>> infinitum.

 HP>> No, he couldn't.  Heinrich Olbers wrote up an explanation for that one
 HP>> in 1823, and he wasn't the first to notice it -- Newton's
 HP>> contemporaries had also brought it up in the 17th century.  It was
 HP>> Newton's gravitational theory that told us that the universe can't have
 HP>> existed forever unless there are an infinite number of perfectly
 HP>> distributed stars, remember?

 AS> Now, it is true that Olbers' paradox would seem to contradict the idea
 AS> of a static universe (although I might point out that since it was
 AS> conceived in 1823, that left 23 years in which one could be a 19th
 AS> century scientist and believe in an unending universe.

In the early 1600's, Johannes Kepler realized that if the universe
really is infinite and really is full of stars, then the night sky
should be a blaze of light.  "Even though distant stars are faint, in an
infinite Universe filled with stars there must be an infinite number of
very faint stars, and their total contribution of light would make the
sky infinitely bright, no matter how faint each individual star. Kepler
thought this proved there must be an 'edge' to the Universe, a boundary
where stars ceased to exist, with only blackness beyond." (Gribbin, _In
the Beginning_, 1993, Little, Brown & Co.)

Newton's theory of gravity showed that the universe couldn't be static
-- it would collapse on itself.  Newton countered that if the universe
were infinite in size and contained an infinite number of equally spaced
stars, it could sustain itself.  His own theory proved him wrong, but he
didn't know that.  However, the problem of the dark night sky remained,
and should alone have told him that he _couldn't_ be right -- as others
in fact had and would continue to notice.  Newton preferred not to
notice.  He _was_ as stubborn as he was brilliant.

In the eighteenth century, notables Thomas Diggs, Edmond Halley,
Philippe Lois de Cheseaux and others pointed out again that there was no
satisfactory explanation for how the universe could be infinite yet the
night sky black.

In the nineteenth century, Heinrich Olbers brought it up yet _again._
The problem became known as Olbers' Paradox (it's not unusual for ideas
to be named after folks who were not their originator -- Copernicanism,
for example, was first proposed by the classical Greeks).  People who
thought that the universe was static were staring right at the disproof
of their belief.  But no one, at the time, had any better ideas. _They
didn't know and knew they didn't know_ -- sound familiar?

Was Olbers Paradox "conceived in 1823" as you claim?  Obviously not.
You have agreed that it seems "to contradict the idea of a static
universe." You have, therefore, agreed to my objection while attempting
to disprove it.  In short, you've debunked yourself.

--- Hymen
 * Origin: Fundy^10 = nothing at all. (1:380/16)
SEEN-BY: 102/2 138 435 752 835 890 943 1013 1326 147/7 270/101 280/1 9 10 25
SEEN-BY: 280/31 45 53 115 135 333 378 398 290/627

@PATH: 380/25 270/101 280/1 102/2 835 943
