From earth, I can hold my thumb out at arms length and eclipse the sun. Multiply that distance by light-years. The size required to block that distant light shrinks exponentially. The skies should be completely black (like on Cricket). Not only would our own atmosphere block starlight, all of the junk in space would constantly be eclipsing it. There are supposedly more rogue planets than star systems by an order of magnitude, just floating through deep space. Yet, when a star DOES dim, it's huge news to us earthlings, when it should be the norm.

Look at a picture of a comet in our solar system. You can see stars through the thickest part of their coma. At light-years away, those particles should completely block any light.

To put it in lay terms, go stand on one side of a forest and point a flashlight through to someone on the other side. When you are close you may see some light through the trees, but once you move back to any great distance there will be no trace of light coming through the forest.

I discovered this issue while trying to make an at scale computer model of star light using the distances referenced by astronomers. Unless you change the properties of how light behaves, it cannot travel 97 trillion km (the closest star).

I have shared this problem with several astronomers, and they have all found it troubling. One of them said he did the math and that it was indeed, impossible for light to reach earth from those distances.

This is insanely elementary. Every astronomer should have asked these questions before grad school. I can only assume that someone is keeping this question suppressed.