This is the key to the correct answer. The universe is not infinitely old. There was a Genesis. There is a finite cutoff to the light that reaches our eye. Light from the most distant stars has not yet had time to reach us. Cosmologist Edward Harrison, who was the first to discover that Poe had solved Olbers’ paradox, has written, “When I first read Poe’s words I was astounded: How could a poet, at best an amateur scientist, have perceived the right explanation 140 years ago when in our colleges the wrong explanation . . . is still being taught?”
