Why is the sky dark at night? The obvious answer is that the sun lights up the sky during the day but is on the opposite side of the planet at night, leaving half of the world in darkness. Would this still be true if the universe were static, infinite and evenly filled with stars?
To answer this question, first place an observer somewhere on Earth.Though some stars would be more distant than others and correspondingly dimmer, there also would be more stars at these greater distances resulting in constant brightness regardless of where the observer is located. Not only would the person standing on the Earth see stars along any given line of sight, but the sky would be bright even at night!
This theory does not match reality, however, because the universe cannot meet the above description.This problem, known as Olber's paradox, led former University student Edgar Allen Poe to foresee some important developments in modern cosmology. Although Poe most often is recognized for his gift with the pen, he also was able to predict correctly that the universe was not static, but actually was increasing every second.
"Poe was inspired by Alexander von Humboldt's attempt to grasp the entire cosmos as an integration of the underlying unity in nature," said Tom Siegfried, science editor of the Dallas Morning News.
Starting with the fact that the universe cannot be infinite and static because the sky is dark at night -- Olber's paradox-- he realized that the paradox could be eliminated if the universe began small and has been expanding ever since.
When Einstein later discovered evidence for the expansion of the universe in his mathematical derivations, he dismissed it, believing the universe instead to be static. Later work by astronomer Edwin Hubble showed the universe is in fact expanding.
This phenomenon, in which a hunch is later verified to be scientific fact, is what scientists refer to as "prediscovery." According to Siegfried, "prediscovery is the idea that somehow people are able to figure out the nature of things in the universe before there is any real evidence."
For example, when Paul Dirac was looking for mathematical justification for the existence of the electron, he stumbled upon another particle with the opposite electrical charge. From these results he predicted the existence of antimatter particles such as positrons, which have since beenexperimentally verified.
In his recent release, Strange Matters, Siegfried discusses many such prediscoveries. Some of these predictions may seem as strange as science fiction, and ultimately could lie outside the bounds of reality.
"At the same time, some things scientists suggest are even stranger than science fiction. So it is up to scientists to separate fact from fiction by looking at how well the math predicts observations," Siegfried said.
For instance, quarks are now an accepted phenomenon in physics, but few realize that their existence was predicted by Murray Gell-Mann even before there was any experimental evidence.
Edgar Allen Poe's prediscovery was certainly strange in its own right in that it was in the form of a long prose poem titled Eureka, in which Poe discussed his view of the nature of the universe.
"For my present purpose of enabling the mind to take in a distant conception of the individual Universe, it is clear that a descent to small from great, to the outskirts from the centre, to the end from the beginning -- if we could fancy a beginning -- would be the preferable course," Poe wrote in "Eureka."
As for potential prediscoveries in the near future, "there is the idea that there are more than three dimensions in space -- or four in the space-time continuum. There is also a good chance for evidence of dark matter to be discovered in the next few years," Siegfried said.
Dark matter, which has been theorized to exist for several years, is said to comprise 90 percent of the universe, but is invisible to our telescopes. The only way we can observe it is to watch how it affects the motion of stars and galaxies. Given the dark tone Poe takes in many of his poems, perhaps scientists can link this prediscovery to him too.
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