Depth 1
How sunsets steal the blue away
At noon, the sun's light takes a short dash straight down through the atmosphere, scattering blue everywhere. But at sunset, the sun dips low and its light has to crawl through ten times more air to reach your eyes. Along that marathon journey, tiny gas molecules smash into the blue light waves and scatter them completely out of view before they ever touch your face. Only the lazy, long-legged red and orange waves survive the brutal trip. This means every red sunset is actually just the ghost of the missing blue sky.