Outer Space Might Not Be Dark After All
“Is space truly black?” Tod Lauer, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, questions. Now, courtesy of research from NASA’s New Horizons team and their spacecraft (which is approximately 4,000,000,000 miles from Earth), we understand that no is quite possibly the answer. The team argues that if you were to remove all sources of visible light from our night sky, there would still be a glow. In fact, the amount of light left behind would be equivalent to what was removed. Astrophysicists recognize the impact of these claims, and responded accordingly. “It’s very difficult to turn around and say to the astronomical community, like, ‘Hey guys, we’re missing half of the stuff out there,'” Michael Zemcov, an astrophysicist at RIT, tells NPR. Read more there.
Image courtesy of NASA
Via npr.org link opens in a new window
