The hydrogen wall makes the sky dark at night

The hypothesis that 200 years ago explained the cause of the dark sky at night is because hydrogen clouds prevent light from the countless stars being proved to be accurate.

The cause of the sky turning dark at night may be due to hydrogen clouds blocking light. Photo: Olli Henze.

A new study using the Hubble Space Telescope image demonstrates that the hypothesis that explains the reason for the dark night sky being overlooked by scientists for the past 200 years is actually correct, Independent today gave believe.

Heinrich Olbers (1758 - 1840), a German astronomer, gave the famous " paradox of dark skies ". Accordingly, he questioned if there were countless stars in the universe, every point in the sky carried a star, so why did it turn dark at night. Olbers speculated that this was due to hydrogen clouds blocking light.

Astronomers then estimated there were 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the space that humans observed, not enough to fill the sky. Therefore, they believe that this hypothesis is not correct to explain the cause of the sky turning dark.

Recently, however, by using the Hubble telescope, astronomers have concluded that there are about 2,000 billion galaxies in the universe.

" The number of galaxies 10 or more times can fill stars in the sky, but most or all of the light from distant galaxies is absorbed by the hydrogen gas that separates the Earth and the galaxy. is the opinion proposed by Olbers but the scientists have previously taken it lightly. Now, we reiterate this hypothesis as an answer to the phenomenon of the night sky at night ", Christopher Conselice, professor astrophysics, University of Nottingham, England, explains.

Conselice professor said other astronomers have demonstrated the existence of hydrogen clouds by studying the spectrum of light. However, at that time they did not know there were galaxies behind the hydrogen wall. In addition, some galaxies are far away in the universe, so their light cannot reach the Earth.

"There may still be many universes, many objects behind the horizon, the limits we can see, " said Conselice professor.