Why is the night sky dark?

In 1823, German Astronomer Heinrich Olbers published a paper based on a powerful observation that many of us have never questioned. “The night sky is dark”.

“Yes it is, so what?”, you might ask. It’s not exactly easy to understand why this is strange. But Olbers asked an important question. If the universe was really infinitely big, and there were infinitely many stars in the sky, wouldn’t you be able to see a star in every direction? Wouldn’t the faint points of light marking the location of each star blend together to create a constantly illuminated night sky? This is known as…