Finite Universe, Dark Sky: How Light’s Speed Solves the Paradox

What really breaks once you remember that light has a finite speed? In this video, we connect Olbers’ paradox to the Big Bang, finite light travel time, and the idea of an observable universe. Light from the Sun takes minutes; light from Andromeda takes millions of years—so looking far away means looking back in time. You’ll learn how a universe with a finite age naturally limits how many stars can light up our sky, and why there were no stars at all for hundreds of millions of years after the beginning. That alone cuts off the “infinite shells” that would otherwise make the night sky blaze like the Sun. But we also go further, showing how cosmic expansion and galaxy redshifts weaken the starlight that actually does arrive. Viewers who enjoy the clear, narrative style popularized by Neil deGrasse Tyson will find this a compelling bridge between a simple dark-sky question and modern cosmology, the Big Bang, and the expanding universe.