That’s the best explanation of Rayleigh scattering I’ve ever seen, thank you!
I guess the interesting questions begin when you try to convert the explanation to a prediction, like “Mommy, was the sky always blue?” or “will it be blue in the future?” That requires knowing a lot more things then just Rayleigh scattering. My knowledge is just enough to tell me that I don’t have a clue. For example, even with just Rayleigh scattering (ignoring all other factors) the sky could also be violet (even shorter wavelength, right?) or orange (if the atmosphere was thicker and most blue light got scattered into space). Then you get into things like the spectrum of the Sun, the composition of the atmosphere, the way water washes out dust, the factors that prevent losing water to space, the role of the biosphere, etc. To answer these innocent questions it seems like you need to know literally all sciences!
As a matter of fact, the nitrogen makes sky blue, but the oxygen makes it green. Had been more oxygen than nitrogen in our atmosphere, they sky would have been green, all else equal.
You can also say, that this blue color is the color of 20000 K, on the Wein’s diagram. Which is the temperature (kinetic energy) of the nitrogen atom hit by an UV photon of the appropriate energy to be absorbed.
And our planet in fact loses water by the hydrogen escaping. 50 kilogram per second.
Well, this I think I know without Googling, You may refine this by—Googling it.
Is this actually true? Do you have a source? I have tried Googling for it.
My understanding is that the sky’s blue color was caused by Rayleigh scattering. This scattering is higher for shorter wavelengths. There’s no broad peak in scattering associated with nitrogen absorption lines (which I imagine would be very narrowband, rather than broadband).
Wikipedia’s article on Rayleigh scatting mentions oxygen twice but makes no reference to your theory.
That’s the best explanation of Rayleigh scattering I’ve ever seen, thank you!
I guess the interesting questions begin when you try to convert the explanation to a prediction, like “Mommy, was the sky always blue?” or “will it be blue in the future?” That requires knowing a lot more things then just Rayleigh scattering. My knowledge is just enough to tell me that I don’t have a clue. For example, even with just Rayleigh scattering (ignoring all other factors) the sky could also be violet (even shorter wavelength, right?) or orange (if the atmosphere was thicker and most blue light got scattered into space). Then you get into things like the spectrum of the Sun, the composition of the atmosphere, the way water washes out dust, the factors that prevent losing water to space, the role of the biosphere, etc. To answer these innocent questions it seems like you need to know literally all sciences!
As a matter of fact, the nitrogen makes sky blue, but the oxygen makes it green. Had been more oxygen than nitrogen in our atmosphere, they sky would have been green, all else equal.
You can also say, that this blue color is the color of 20000 K, on the Wein’s diagram. Which is the temperature (kinetic energy) of the nitrogen atom hit by an UV photon of the appropriate energy to be absorbed.
And our planet in fact loses water by the hydrogen escaping. 50 kilogram per second.
Well, this I think I know without Googling, You may refine this by—Googling it.
Is this actually true? Do you have a source? I have tried Googling for it.
My understanding is that the sky’s blue color was caused by Rayleigh scattering. This scattering is higher for shorter wavelengths. There’s no broad peak in scattering associated with nitrogen absorption lines (which I imagine would be very narrowband, rather than broadband).
Wikipedia’s article on Rayleigh scatting mentions oxygen twice but makes no reference to your theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering