The darkness of the universe: Insufficient light or insufficient material?

Surmises concerning light

Contemplation of the various images of our universe reveals that the distinctive darkness of the universe is the result of far more than its vastness and emptiness and a lack of enough sources of light. In these images, we see cosmic objects—those that emit light and those only reflect light—appearing amid absolute darkness. During a total solar eclipse, for instance, the gas area that makes up the outermost atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, is illuminated; but just beyond the corona, the space is dark, although the Sun’s light is indisputably traveling through it.

The space that separates the Earth and the Moon offers another good example: the Sun’s light has no effect of illumination throughout this area. It is only when the Sun’s light contact with the Moon’ surface that its illuminating effect is “turned on.” Similarly, the space beyond the Moon, which is undoubtedly dominated with the Sun’s light, appears dark. The light traveling through it remains, in effect, undetected, until it illuminates the surface of a planet, a comet, or any another object that may be traveling through this area of space.

The far outer space, too, offers further examples of how the effect of illumination occurs where there is material. In the deep-field photographs of the Hubble Space Telescope, where collections of gases occupy a region of space, we can easily observe illuminated hazy areas amid the distinctive darkness; and, if the emitted radiation of stars meets a dense region of collected gases and dust, the illuminating effect creates what are known as reflecting nebulae. 

Wouldn’t these examples suggest that where there is material in the universe, there is illumination, rather than where there is light? Wouldn’t they further suggest that the very radiations that create visible light are invisible, and that visible light―instead of being considered as a singular visible radiation―may be simply just a visible effect ensuing form the contact of some invisible radiations emitted by hot bodies with an object?

In the photographs taken by astronauts on the surface of the Moon, a likely affirmative answer to these two questions can be found. In these photographs, which were taken during the Moon’s two-week-long daytime, we see the astronauts against a dark background of space, while the Sun illuminates the ground on which they are standing. If the Moon had an atmosphere through which the Sun’s radiations had traveled, the astronauts would have appeared against an illuminated background. But such material—gases for an atmosphere—was not found, and so the effect—illumination—did not occur. For that very reason, if a photograph was taken for the Sun from the Moon’s surface, the space between the Moon and the Sun would not have appeared illuminated; in other words, a looker at the Sun from the Moon’s surface would see all the area between the Sun and the Moon bathing in absolute darkness.  

The twinkling of stars in the night sky may support my opinion that visible light is a product ensuing from the contact of some invisible radiations emitted by hot bodies with a material. The twinkling of  stars, I think, is just an apparent observable fact caused by the movements occur in the layers of air in Earth’s atmosphere. In my opinion, the movements of air in Earth’s atmosphere alters the point of contact of a star’s radiations with the atmosphere while penetrating through it―the point, according to my suggestion, at which star’s invisible radiations become “turned on” as visible light. It is these alterations in “the point of producing a star’s visible light” that make stars appear to us as if they were twinkling.

A planet does not twinkle whatever far is its distance from the Earth. This means that the reflected visible light, which ensued from the contact between a planet’s surface with the Sun’s radiations, differs in its nature from the radiations reach us from a star: were the light reaching our eyes from planets similar to the radiations emitted by stars, they would all act in the same apparent method―either they would all twinkle or they all would not.

How a picture of a star, then, form in our eyes in the same way a picture of a planet does? A picture of an object forms in our eyes when some invisible radiations, produced by heated-up bodies, contact with it, and then this object reflects the product resulted from this contact―visible light―to our retinas. In the case of stars, accordingly, the point of contact at which their visibility occurs in our eyes is―not the point at which the radiations emitted by them meet our retinas―but the outer surface of their bodies, where the invisible radiations produced within them are turned into visible light, through the contact with the material that makes up their surfaces: this produced visible light is reflected by the stars’ surfaces to our eyes.

It is the seven colors into which the white light we receive from the Sun is split up when passing through a prism, that make me think that the white light we receive from the Sun is ensued from seven invisible radiations emitted by the Sun, each one of these radiations is responsible for one of the rainbow colors.

Along with what we call visible light, the electromagnetic spectrum includes six different radiations, three of which are of wavelength shorter than that of what we call light, while the three others are of wavelength longer than light’s. If it is to be proved that each one of the six electromagnetic radiations other than what we call light―gamma, x-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, microwave, radio wave― is responsible for one of the rainbow colors, then the Sun’s white light is produced at the interference point of these seven radiation; and the seventh color signifies one unknown type of electromagnetic radiation.

I think the suggestion that what we call light is produced at the interference point of the electromagnetic radiations when contact with an object, may be supported by tree facts: (1) James Clerk Maxwell’s equation that proves that all forms of electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light; (2) the characteristic phenomenon which light shares with the other forms of electromagnetic radiations―the process so called diffraction, that is, light and all the electromagnetic radiations bend to the sides when they pass through a small hole, and then spread out; (3) the device that researcher in Finland and Belarus have produced, which they called “metasheet”―a material into which were embedded wire helices capable of absorbing electromagnetic radiation in a very narrow band of wavelengths, but remain transparent for the others in the spectrum; the metasheet worked for microwave radiation, and a modified design was obtained to work for visible light. 

To sum up, I think that the darkness of the universe is not due to its vastness or a lack of sources of light. For the radiations that crate visible light dominate every spot of the universe, but the universe remains dark only because there are no enough material to “turn on” the illuminating effect of the radiations emitted by the countless billions of stars found within. I think, as well, that visible light is not a singular radiation emitted by hot bodies, but just a product resulted from the contact of the electromagnetic radiations, at their interference point, with an object; and that the wavelength attributed to what we call visible light signifies the wavelength of the point of interference of the radiations emitted by a hot body.