When we try to
understand space, one question is why is the space black? Our sun is a star
that alone illuminates our day with its bright and charming colors. As we also
know that there are countless other bright suns (stars) in the universe like
our sun, it means that our space should also be bright and shiny. But when we
look at the pictures on the Internet, we are surprised that even though there
are many bright bodies, the space seems dark to us. In other words, it looks
completely dark like night time with which we wonder why it is dark?
Before this, we
should know why there is not so much light on earth? And the answer to this
question lies in the Earth's atmosphere. It is made up of gases, water vapor,
and dust molecules. So when the light from the sun hits these bodies, it splits
into different colors and travels in different directions, resulting in the
blue sky and beautiful shadows at sunrise and sunset.
On the other hand,
although there is some gas and cosmic dust in space, there is no atmosphere made
up of molecules that can reflect the traveling light, so space looks dark. This
means that if the Earth's atmosphere disappears, then the Earth will be dark
forever.
But one question may
be that if the light continues to travel, then why does it not enter the
atmosphere and illuminate the earth at night? The reason for this is that
scientists believe that after the big bang event that happened 13.8 billion
years ago, everything is moving away from the place where the big bang started.
In other words, our universe is
constantly expanding and objects are moving away from each other over time,
including light particles that are moving away and expanding, resulting in
darker spots in space. Not only that, but due to this diffusion of light, the
wavelength of light has been spread to such an extent that it becomes dim
before it reaches our eyes. Think of the light coming from a flashlight that
cannot travel beyond a certain distance.
Another reason space
is dark is that light can travel at a certain speed. And since most of the
stars are very far away from the Earth, the light coming from them has not
reached us yet or maybe the light from these stars
has died before reaching our planet.
But what about the stars in the vicinity of our planet?
You won't believe it, but the closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri,
which is 4 light years away from us and is about 25 billion miles away. If this
distance is compared with the sun, our sun is only 9.3 million miles away from
the earth. Proxima Centauri is 7 times smaller than our Sun and compared to the
sun, only a small part of the light is emitted. Therefore, since there is no
other light body in the vicinity of our planet,
space appears dark to us.
Another reason why
space looks dark is that our eyes can't see other types of light, but
scientists have developed devices that allow them to see other colors. which
are hidden from our naked eyes. This allows them to find out what gases make up
the nebula because each gas has a specific color, and we hope that in the
future we will be able to build telescopes
that will help us see them. We will also become able to see colors.
2. CERN || European Research Laboratory || The world's largest Physics Laboratory
3. James Webb Space Telescope, A time machine
4. Can a star turn into a planet?
