37
New Horizons Is Now So Far Away, It Can Measure The True Darkness of Space.
(www.sciencealert.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
37 points (100.0% liked)
Space
7293 readers
20 users here now
News and findings about our cosmos.
Subcommunity of Science
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I’m guessing that because there are always some amount of stars visible, the number would have to be above zero, but maybe as you get a certain distance away from closer stars, the darkness kind of “evens out”?
Well now you've got me wondering... how long after the heat-death of the universe before all of the traveling photons have been extinguished? How old will the universe be before it truly goes dark?
Huh I never thought about photons not aging. I guess since they're traveling at the speed of light it means they don't experience any time between being emitted and when they collide with something.
That theory on the big rip sounds fascinating, I'm going to have to look that up! Thanks for the info.
As for the redshifting... as far I understand it you can't see a photon until it actually hits something anyway, at which point it is no longer an unresolved particle of light? My immediate thought on this subject is that you would need to calculate the theoretical maximum width of the universe in light years when the last bit of energy is used up, and that should give a maximum value for how long a photon can exist beyond that period. However then you start bringing in other theories like the torus universe that wraps around on itself, and now you have the potential for photons to travel forever until they do hit something so there could be the possibility of photons existing indefinitely after the heat death. And you can't really call the universe "dead" if there is still some energy tied up in photons.
I mean it's all just a fun exercise of the mind, there may not be an actual answer, but I love thinking about what happens at the extreme ends of things.
I was also wondering about near black holes. If even light can't escape, is there basically pure total darkness beyond the event horizon?