Poe postulated other ideas about the origin of the universe that have a strikingly modern feel. For example, he proposed that the universe started from a “primordial particle” and then expanded by “irradiating spherically” in all directions as new atoms were created.18 This theory of the origin of the universe led him to propose what modern astronomers now think of as the correct solution to Olbers’s paradox: the universe has a finite age, so light has only had time to reach us from a limited number of stars.
