Why is the sky blue?
No, seriously… why is the sky blue? Is there a scientific explanation to this? It’s been bothering me for years!
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Water , the sea . If there was no sea or less amount of the earth covered in sea, it would be green due to the plant life .
There is something else i am missing about the atmosphere , maybe someone will fill that gap .—i am pretty sure atmosphere plays apart in it—
Yes, there is. So, when sunlight comes through the atmosphere, the air refracts and reflects it many times before it gets down to the ground. By the time it does come down, blue is the most prevalent color. That’s also why the sunset can appear in brilliant colors: as the sun goes down, the amount of atmosphere that the light goes through changes, and so the wavelength of light that is most prevalent changes.
I just used wiki’ and this is what it says The sunlit sky appears blue because air scatters short-wavelength light more than longer wavelengths. Since blue light is at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum, it is more strongly scattered in the atmosphere than long wavelength red light. The result is that the human eye perceives blue when looking toward parts of the sky other than the sun.[1] Near sunrise and sunset, most of the light we see comes in nearly tangent to the Earth’s surface, so that the light’s path through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even green light is scattered out, leaving the sun rays and the clouds it illuminates red. Therefore, when looking at the sunset and sunrise, you will see the color red more than any of the other colors.
Scattering and absorption are major causes of the attenuation of radiation by the atmosphere. Scattering varies as a function of the ratio of the particle diameter to the wavelength of the radiation. When this ratio is less than about one-tenth, Rayleigh scattering occurs in which the scattering coefficient varies inversely as the fourth power of the wavelength. At larger values of the ratio of particle diameter to wavelength, the scattering varies in a complex fashion described, for spherical particles, by the Mie theory; at a ratio of the order of 10, the laws of geometric optics begin to apply.
@sandystrachan Well, i was going to extend my answer, but you pretty much covered that >.<
The sky is blue because it reflects the ocean. And the ocean is blue because it reflects the sky. Uh… wait a second….
Yes, of course there’s an explanation in science!
The different wavelengths of light create the colors you see in the rainbow. The simplest version of this explanation is that the wavelength that creates the color blue is simply reflected the most. It has nothing to do with water or whatever, haha…I actually think the ocean is blue from the sky being blue? Never looked into it, really. If someone knows that for sure, please enlighten me =)
It’s been bothering you for years?
@syz Yes, years and years!
Damn. And I could have answered this without the help of Wikipedia. Gotta give me a chance, people!
@Les well, that’s why I answered a little and then went to get the longer (and better) version. Granted, i was beaten to that, but * shrug * ^_^
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@bpeoples Well… that was amazing. I must remember to use that. But, that’s being rather mean in this case. This is a site made for asking and answering questions. You could just post that for 90% of the questions here.
@BhacSsylan True—but there’s not much to be discussed when you’re talking about facts (e.g., why is the sky blue)—and I feel that asking questions that can be answered by googling and hitting “I’m Feeling Lucky”
That said, I’m in a bit of a grumpy mood, and taking it out on Fluther =)
@bpeoples Well, maybe there is a factual answer to this, but some people may have their own opinions!
@bpeoples Well, that is true, but one of the faults of Google is that it doesn’t check it’s facts, it can easily be wrong. We can be wrong, too, but at least here there’s lots of people who can point out others mistakes.
That said, I still think that site is pretty amazing.
Rayleigh Scattering Principle.
Too bad, too. I always thought it was the water.
My husband ruined this for me by telling me the science behind it. I’d been told something whimsical as a child and always believed it :(
Looking down upon all the human misery would make anyone blue
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