Eli5: If there’s infinite stars, why isn’t our night sky completely lit up?

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As the title says, if there’s infinite stars, wouldn’t the light from all of them have reached us and made our night sky become completely white from the number of stars there are? Is there just not enough stars in proximity to earth for all the light to reach us in time to see?

I’m sure there’s a simple answer, but it’s 1am here and my brain can’t figure it out.

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18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of the astronomers here are replying that “there aren’t infinite stars, so this solves the paradox”.

That very well may be true, but here’s something far more interesting that is purely based on mathematics: **it is possible for an infinite number of light sources to add up to a non-infinite luminosity**, depending on how they’re spaced.

See this 3Blue1Brown video for an example and a visual explanation of how this can be possible: https://youtu.be/d-o3eB9sfls

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