Precisely because he is arguing against an infinite universe makes me doubt the validity of his argument.
And, yes, now I understand it. The argument is equivalent to Olbers' paradox.
I don't understand why it would refute the argument. If nothing outside the observable universe can reach us, then wouldn't that be only in agreement with his observation that the brightness of the sky isn't infinite?
Yes, of course. The "observable universe". But that doesn't readily refute Sidis' argument.
By the way, I think there are two typos. The first one is in the sentence "let us say the unit distance divided by 4n". The "n" isn't supposed to be there. And the second when he says "we find that the...
This is an excerpt from a manuscript by William James Sidis published in 1920 called "The Animate and the Inanimate":
[SIZE="3"] But there is one outstanding objection to this theory that the stellar universe is infinite. There may be supposed to be no reason why the average...
Has anyone considered a more general conjecture? Like x^n + x^(n-1) + x^(n-2)... x*p - c = 0, x^n + x^(n-1) *p + x^(n-2) * p ... x*p - c = 0, or x^n + x * p - c = 0 ?