Someone much, much smarter than I could explain it in more detail. Deep space isn't so much dark, it's empty.
For trillions of miles in every direction and VERY rarely on occasion, there's just absolutely nothing out there.
You'll have the near-speed-of-light particles possibly hitting you full force and that's lights out for any piece of technology we're currently capable of inventing. But to SEE something is to DETECT it, yes? To Perceive it. Human eyeballs are good at doing that -- but not perfect.
We see in the visual spectrum. Scaled up a few orders of magnitude, we have the James Webb Telescope, capable of 'seeing' hilariously further, in ridiculous detail, than the human eyeball. One pixel of it's resolution across ten days could provide an orchestral extravaganza, an avalanche of light and beauty and galactic prowess. It's stunning, really.
But even the JW has it's limits. That's just. how. dang. big. the expanding universe is. It is SO big, in fact, that the further out you go -- past all of the light we can see with our eyes -- the fewer and further between even atoms become. So much so that you'd be lucky to find one at all. And when there's nothing out there, seldom even the light of the stars around you, it's not just dark.
It is a dark that we cannot even truly Perceive.
There just isn't enough 'stuff' to interact with other 'stuff' for us to 'See'. Imagine dark to a few orders of magnitude. Scary stuff.
Tri4ceunited t1_ix8xioc wrote
Reply to Just how dark is deep space? by ArmchairSpinDoctor
Someone much, much smarter than I could explain it in more detail. Deep space isn't so much dark, it's empty. For trillions of miles in every direction and VERY rarely on occasion, there's just absolutely nothing out there.
You'll have the near-speed-of-light particles possibly hitting you full force and that's lights out for any piece of technology we're currently capable of inventing. But to SEE something is to DETECT it, yes? To Perceive it. Human eyeballs are good at doing that -- but not perfect.
We see in the visual spectrum. Scaled up a few orders of magnitude, we have the James Webb Telescope, capable of 'seeing' hilariously further, in ridiculous detail, than the human eyeball. One pixel of it's resolution across ten days could provide an orchestral extravaganza, an avalanche of light and beauty and galactic prowess. It's stunning, really.
But even the JW has it's limits. That's just. how. dang. big. the expanding universe is. It is SO big, in fact, that the further out you go -- past all of the light we can see with our eyes -- the fewer and further between even atoms become. So much so that you'd be lucky to find one at all. And when there's nothing out there, seldom even the light of the stars around you, it's not just dark. It is a dark that we cannot even truly Perceive.
There just isn't enough 'stuff' to interact with other 'stuff' for us to 'See'. Imagine dark to a few orders of magnitude. Scary stuff.