Why is the area of space outside of Earth dark when part of the planet is daytime?

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Why is the area of space outside of Earth dark when part of the planet is daytime?

In: Physics

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You only ever “see” something because of light that is either emitted from it or reflected from it. Space, however, is overwhelmingly empty, thus there is no light being reflected off of anything. Your eyes resolve this lack of light as darkness.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In the simplest of terms… You see things because light bounces off of it. In space there is nothing to bounce light of. So space looks dark not because there is no light the sun is still inundating the place with a lot of light. But there is nothing to bounce the light of so you see nothing and hence it looks dark.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The first thing to understand: Light will always travel in straight lines unless it is reflected, bent or scattered.

The second thing to understand: Space is empty, so there is nothing for the light waves to interact with and so we observe it as black.

When we look at an object, what we are actually observing are light waves reflecting off of the object. The color of an object is determined by what wavelengths of light an object reflects and absorbs. A white object reflects almost all of the wavelengths of light, a red object reflects red wavelengths of light and absorbs the other wavelengths, a black object absorbs almost the wavelengths of light.

When sunlight hits the atmosphere on a nice clear day, blue wavelengths of light are scattered by all the gases and air molecules in the atmosphere giving the sky the appearance of being blue. The atmosphere gets thinner and thinner the higher it goes and eventually the density of gases and air molecules is so low that the light is no longer being reflected, bent or scattered. This ’empty’ space therefore appears black as there is nothing for the light waves to interact with.

Anonymous 0 Comments

To see something you need photon coming from it. In space you see the photon from the sun bouncing on the earth and coming directly into your eyes, but any photon that bounce on the earth and miss you eye, will just keep going into space until it bounce on something. In space there is mostly empty space, so nothing for the photon to bounce, with lead to space to be black.

This is different from earth, where light bounce of everything, walls, ground, even the atmosphere.