The Secret Science Behind Our Brilliant Blue Sky

Have you ever looked up and wondered why the sky is blue instead of another color?

Most people think the sky reflects the ocean, but that is actually a common myth.

The real reason involves sunlight and the way it interacts with our planet's atmosphere.

Sunlight looks white to our eyes, but it is actually made of all the colors of the rainbow.

When this light reaches Earth, it hits the gas molecules and particles in the air.

This process causes the light to scatter in every direction.

Blue light travels in shorter, smaller waves, so it scatters much more than other colors.

Because blue light spreads everywhere across the sky, that is what we see when we look up.

Red and yellow light have longer wavelengths, so they pass through the atmosphere more easily.

This explains why the sun looks yellow to us during the middle of the day.

During a sunset, the light has to travel through even more of the atmosphere to reach your eyes.

By the time it arrives, most of the blue light has been scattered away completely.

This allows the beautiful oranges and reds to finally become visible to us.

Without our atmosphere, the sky would always look completely black like it does in space.

Next time you see a bright blue sky, you can appreciate the complex physics happening above you.