It’s true that astronomers before Poe also proposed that the light from very distant stars couldn’t reach us. But Poe had a different idea about the reason for this. Unlike the earlier thinkers, who thought that the light from distant objects might grow tired or that the ether might block it, Poe proposed that the universe was not old enough to give light sufficient time to get to the earth from the most remote regions of the vast night sky.17 And if it was not old enough, that meant it was not of infinite age.
