What's the matter with letting in a little light....

 

BACK in the movie 2001 there comes a moment when Dave Bowman says in quiet amazement: "Its full of stars". Well the firmament is but it would have been more astonishing to most of us if he had said: "It's full of light".

For it is. The universe is full, absolutely and utterly full, of light. And yet we can see but a tiny fraction of it. Individually. Let me explain a little.

When we each look at the night sky we see a black universe interspersed with bright, white lights. Most of them in fact will be galaxies which are vast distances away from us. A large number will be stars in our own galaxy, specifically those in our spiral arm of the Milky Way. And a few more wandering items of different hue will be the planets we share our solar system with.

But the rest is apparently black as your hat. Apparently without light. And yet I can assure you it is utterly brimming with light.

Your neighbour next door will look at the sky and see exactly what you see – but not by the same beams of light. For those reaching your neighbours eye are different from those reaching your eye. And so it goes across the planet. And ever more as we place observers – static and animated – on distant objects like the moon and one day, Mars and more.

And why is because light travels in straight lines. And an object generating light – single star or complex galaxy – will generate myriads of beams of light all radiating from its outer surface. And just one of these is enough for you to 'see' the object generating that beam. And another beam is enough for the person standing next to you to see it too. And so it goes for every 'viewer' in the universe. And so your object star is a vast and single point or generator of uncounted trillions of rays heading out in all directions. Yes, all directions.

That is why the universe is not actually dark at all but infused with a vast array of electro magnetic waves of light beaming out almost endlessly into the abyss. I say almost because of course all things die – stars collapse into dwarves of various form, more form into light-trapping black holes, entire galaxies switch off their light production and became mere clinkers. Entropy will ensure that some of these infinitely long beams of light will have an end – and that 'end' will travel (recede?) across the universe, turning off the vision of its generator in the eye of the beholders.

Now there are implications in this. It seems that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Now make a note here 'observed'.

I suggest very strongly that this is the flaw in our various hypthoses – we only 'observe' 80% of the energy – the rest is the unseen but vast rays of light effectively swilling about unheeded. And if as theory suggest these rays contain 'photons' of light then maybe that is also the 'missing' 20% of matter?

References among many:

Stars produce their own light and energy by a process called nuclear fusion. Fusion happens when lighter elements are forced to become heavier elements. When this happens, a tremendous amount of energy is created causing the star to heat up and shine. Stars come in a variety of sizes and colors. https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/204-What-is-a-star-#:~:text=Stars%20produce%20their%20own%20light,variety%20of%20sizes%20and%20colors.

In fact visible 'light' is a form of radiation, which can be defined as an energy that travels in the form of electromagnetic waves. It can also be described as a flow of particle-like 'wave-packets', called photons, that travel constantly at the speed of light (about 300 000 kilometres per second).

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Energy_light_radiation_temperature#:~:text=In%20fact%20visible%20'light'%20is,300%20000%20kilometres%20per%20second).

Photons do not have mass or do not have a known quantity of mass, meaning they are not matter in that sense. However, photons are particles that are emitted and travel as waves, meaning that as particles they can be considered matter, just matter without mass which makes them a paradox.

https://homework.study.com/explanation/is-a-photon-matter.html#:~:text=Photons%20do%20not%20have%20mass,which%20makes%20them%20a%20paradox.

https://www.universetoday.com/25179/what-is-the-light-from-stars/

(By the way, the image header would not look at all like that without the interposition  of lenses - it is these that produce the 'star burst effect; just as your own eye lens will create dazzle from approaching headlights. )