An optical solution of Olbers' paradox

Abstract

Shown is that contrary to common intuition, even an arbitrarily weak attenuating mechanism is sufficient to make the background sky quite dark independently of the size of the universe and the Hubble expansion. Further shown is that such an attenuation already exists in the wave nature of light due to entrapment and diffusion from successive diffractions. This is a fundamentally new mechanism to physics, as illustrated by application to the solar neutrino attenuation, galactic dark matter and gamma ray bursts problems. It not only provides a big bang-like cutoff, but also appears to explain the appearance of primeval, metal-deficient galaxies at high redshifts, without deviating from the Olbers' premise of an infinite universe.