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Shape of the Sky

Look up into the sky. It appears to be a great dome above our heads. It’s like a planetarium with all the stars painted against the ceiling of this dome.

Now think. This doesn’t make any sense, does it? We all know that space has no shape, and that’s exactly what we’re looking at. So why does it appear to so clearly be dome-shaped?

I have a few ideas as to what the reason could be:

  1. This is simply an illusion. Since there is a horizon, the sky appears to touch the ground on all sides of us. In any other situation, this would mean that whatever is over our heads and touching the ground all around us must have a dome-like shape to it. Through evolution, this assumption would come in handy to us, just like how we look at “solid” objects as “solid”, even though they are mostly made up of space.
  2. The atmosphere is round, so it filters our vision of the sky around us and everything beyond it appears to take the shape of it.
  3. No matter where we stand on the planet, we always make up certain angles with the sky. The zenith is right above our heads and it is a 90 degree angle. All of these angles would form an apparent spherical sky.

Maybe it’s a combination of all these three things, or maybe they’re all wrong. Either way, I’m sure you’ll head will hurt the next time you look at the sky and try to figure it out.