Why is it that the earth is bright but space is dark even though there are many suns in space?

Answer 1

The light is still there, but it does not scatter into blue sky like it does with Earth's atmosphere. That's why the sky looks black in outer space. But if you held up a piece of paper, it would be illuminated very brightly in the sun. The atmosphere refracts the light and scatters it all around the sky.

Essentially, in the vacuum of space, there is very little matter to reflect the sunlight radiated out through the solar system. A good example is a comet passing through the inner solar system. Gas and particles are thrown off the comet's head and form its wide "tail", which is then very brightly illuminated.

Answer 2

The Earth is bright only where the Sun is shining on it. Midnight on a moonless night you will see that it is fairly dark.

There are hundreds of billions of suns just in the Milky Way, but they are all VERY far away - and there are clouds of gas and dust that block the light of most the suns in our galaxy. Did I mention that they are very far away? That's why the night sky - even with all those stars - is still pretty dark

Objects in space either emit light (like stars) or reflect it (like planetary surfaces). Space itself does not emit light--not counting the 3K cosmic background radiation which permeates the universe. Therefore space itself is dark.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Consider this: If you are twice as far from a star you only get a quarter as much light from it. Light, like gravity, decreases as the reciprocal of the square of the distance.

The nearest star to Earth, aside from the sun, is about 206000 times further away. This means its we get one part in 42 400 000 000 of its light! All other stars are even further away.

Comment: This question is quite a famous one known as Olbers' Paradox. The explanation is still somewhat controversial amongst astronomers . The usual explanation is given in terms of the finite time that the universe has existed and the expansion of the universe, combined with the finite speed of light. If there were infinitely many stars randomly distributed, eventually any point in space away from us should intersect with the path of a star, and the entire sky would be light. Therefore, there are NOT infinitely many stars randomly distributed. There could still be infinitely many stars all lined up behind the stars we can see--but Olber considered that possibility highly unlikely.

You have billions of stars in the space. But they are placed far away from each other. You can see their faint images, when they are far away. There are two reasons for the same. One is that stars looks smaller, when they are far away. Secondly, the light is reflected back by the cosmic dust, making stars invisible. When enough light does not enter your eyes, the stars become almost invisible. Also that, you are not supposed to see the light, which is travelling in the space. Light itself, is invisible. So you see most of the space as dark back ground and see very few stars and not the billions of them.

Answer 3

The Earth is bright because it reflects sunlight and has its own sources of light, such as cities, while space appears dark because it is mostly empty and lacks objects to reflect or emit light. Although there are many suns in space, they are so far apart that their light doesn't illuminate the vast distances in between, creating the perception of darkness.

Answer 4

earth has a sun nearby and space is too big to be lit by suns