PART I

INTRODUCTORY SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCES

Olbers' Paradox

Why is the sky dark at night?  If there are an infinite number of stars, then eventually the light from distant stars should build up and fill the distant night sky.  The nineteenth century astronomer Heinrich Olbers developed a number of assumptions about the universe.  His model was based on the hypothesis that stars were uniform in distributed in the large volume of space involved, that the stars had similar luminosity, and that the universe was static in nature.

J. Silk in his book on cosmology considered the paradox.  "A remarkable paradox emerges from these assumptions.  Consider any large spherical shell centered on the earth.  Within this shell, the amount of light produced by stars can be calculated.  Then consider a shell of twice the radius.  Within this shell,  the stars are on the average only one quarter as bright, but there are four times as many of them, and so they make a similar contribution to the light of the night sky.  For each doubling of the radius, the amount of light received on the earth is doubled, and so the night sky must double in brightness" [1].  Olbers suggested that space was filled with an absorbing medium.  This was soon discounted, because at some point, it would be heated to a degree that it would radiate as much as it received, hence back to the original paradox.

Modern theories attempt to resolve it by origination of radiation theories.  First, the time concept of radiation origination. Silk further stated.  "It seems that the sky is dark at night because when we look far out into space, we are looking far back in time, to an era before when the stars started shining" [2].  Other theories are based on the total amount of hydrogen in the universe, and the finite lives of stars keeps the background luminosity of starlight from building up.

T. Ferris suggests another alternative.  "We can also appeal to the redshift of the light from distant galaxies as an alternative means of resolving Olbers’ Paradox.  The redshift amounts to a loss of energy, and the light from distant galaxies is highly red shifted.... To avoid an excessive theoretical night sky brightness, astronomers have been compelled to conclude that most of the luminosity from young galaxies must have been highly red shifted. Thus, the modern resolution of Olbers' Paradox lies in rejecting his assumption of an infinite static universe" [3]. Now, it is not suggested that a static universe is the answer, but an alternative theory is suggested.

Is the explanation to be found within the atom itself?  Is there within the atom an absorbing area and emitting area? Spectroscopic lines from starlight suggest this possibility.  The lines are discrete, with both emission and absorption lines.  Attempts have been made to build a case, that between the star's emission of light and the reception here on earth, clouds of intervening matter result in absorption lines appearing. The Circular Model of the Atom is an alternative explanation.

[1] Silk, J., 1980. The Big Bang. New York: W. H. Freeman, p. 55.

[2] Silk, J., 1980. The Big Bang. New York: W. H. Freeman, p. 56.

[3] Ferris, T., 1977. The Red Limit. 2nd ed. New York: William Morrow, p. 89.

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