Why is the setting sun red ?
Because the atmospheric particles scatter the sun rays. Different colors of the spectrum are scattered differently, the blue end of the spectrum encounters more scattering and the red end encounters lesser.
During daytime, the amount of distance the sun rays have to travel through the atmosphere is significantly lesser than the same when the sun is setting. Thus the scattering effect becomes prominent at sunset and the color tends towards red, gradually becoming very red.
Why are sun rays scattered ?
The rays are scattered by minuscule particles that are suspended in the air. The light waves, as they are traveling through the atmosphere, tend to bounce off these particles in different directions.
Why aren't all colors scattered the same ?
The white sun ray consists of electro-magnetic waves of different wavelengths. The smallest wavelengths perceivable to the human visual system generate the sensation of the color blue and bluish, and the largest wavelengths generate red and the colors near that. Small wavelength light has more chance of encountering particles of size comparable to their wavelengths, and are blocked and scattered away. For large wavelength light the chances of encountering particles able to bounce them off are less since larger particles have less chance of being suspended in the atmosphere. Its similar to how a log floating on water can block a small ripple but would only oscillate along when facing a large wave.
Why do sun rays have lights of different wavelengths ?
Am sure you can explain this. And probably the many whys it will engender further, but eventually you will realize that you are hitting some that you don't know how to explain yet. But my point is that your why would have been answered fully, or should I say to your satisfaction, if you had just accepted this as a fact or as something true or as thats the way it is.
Doesn't the same happen in any answer finding process? You will stop when things are answered to your satisfaction. And it will always imply that somewhere deep in the chain or not so very deep even, you encounter acceptance.
Is it that the why is more correctly answered when the acceptance is very many levels deep? and is not so well answered when the acceptance is not so far deep?
And wouldn't it also mean that enlightenment, whatever way you choose to interpret it, is also just a form of acceptance ?
Quote from Stephen W. Hawking to end this:
Because the atmospheric particles scatter the sun rays. Different colors of the spectrum are scattered differently, the blue end of the spectrum encounters more scattering and the red end encounters lesser.
During daytime, the amount of distance the sun rays have to travel through the atmosphere is significantly lesser than the same when the sun is setting. Thus the scattering effect becomes prominent at sunset and the color tends towards red, gradually becoming very red.
Why are sun rays scattered ?
The rays are scattered by minuscule particles that are suspended in the air. The light waves, as they are traveling through the atmosphere, tend to bounce off these particles in different directions.
Why aren't all colors scattered the same ?
The white sun ray consists of electro-magnetic waves of different wavelengths. The smallest wavelengths perceivable to the human visual system generate the sensation of the color blue and bluish, and the largest wavelengths generate red and the colors near that. Small wavelength light has more chance of encountering particles of size comparable to their wavelengths, and are blocked and scattered away. For large wavelength light the chances of encountering particles able to bounce them off are less since larger particles have less chance of being suspended in the atmosphere. Its similar to how a log floating on water can block a small ripple but would only oscillate along when facing a large wave.
Why do sun rays have lights of different wavelengths ?
Am sure you can explain this. And probably the many whys it will engender further, but eventually you will realize that you are hitting some that you don't know how to explain yet. But my point is that your why would have been answered fully, or should I say to your satisfaction, if you had just accepted this as a fact or as something true or as thats the way it is.
Doesn't the same happen in any answer finding process? You will stop when things are answered to your satisfaction. And it will always imply that somewhere deep in the chain or not so very deep even, you encounter acceptance.
Is it that the why is more correctly answered when the acceptance is very many levels deep? and is not so well answered when the acceptance is not so far deep?
And wouldn't it also mean that enlightenment, whatever way you choose to interpret it, is also just a form of acceptance ?
Quote from Stephen W. Hawking to end this:
A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."
-- Stephen W. Hawking, A brief History of Time.
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