• Question: With all the stars and suns why is space black/dark?

    Asked by evsrules3 to Austin, Kirsty, Nicola, Nike, Sarah on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Kirsty Ross

      Kirsty Ross answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Space is almost unimaginably vast in size. In addition, the universe is still expanding. This is putting more and more distance between stars and galaxies. Light has speed and so we cannot see all the light from all the stars throughout the universe. Because many of these stars and galaxies are moving away from us, their light takes longer to reach us. Although there are so many stars their light is still not enough to fill the space between them with light. In addition, space looks dark to us on earth as we can only really see in the visible spectrum. If we were able to see microwave, radio, infrared or UV light then the night sky might look very different to us. It is why we have telescopes that enable us to ‘see’ this invisible light.

    • Photo: Nike Dattani

      Nike Dattani answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Each star is only bright enough to light up a certain area. There’s not enough stars for all of the universe to be bright =)

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