/sci/ - Science & Math

it's not invisible it's see-thru. you don't ask this about glass

>>9875856
Glass isn't invisible though. Glass is see-through.

Air is invisible. You can't see it. Its got superpowers.

>>9875851
How Can Our Air Be Real If Our Eyes Can't See It

>>9875851
It's not invisible.
← see that blue haze? That's air.

>>9875936
would be more compelling if it didn't have a fake lens flare and stars

>>9875851
define air. do you mean the mixture of gasses our atmosphere contains? well, it's not invisible.
have you ever seen the "airwaves" over the street on a really hot day? that's air.
tornado? that's air.

>>9875936
>blue haze
the ozon layer makes it look blue.

>>9875851
I also thought water was un-taste-able until I moved to another town for work. When I came back, I could taste my hometown's water.
Maybe try spending a couple months in the space colonies and come back?

>>9875851
air technically isn't invisible in all forms. the sky is blue because some air is visible in the form of dipoles radiating energy from the sun as blue/light purple in some parts
that's a good question though idk why air for the most part is invisible

>>9875851
Air is invisible because Man evolved eyes to see. For otherwise, Evolution in Her wisdom would have provided us with an alternate solution, as we see with cave animals and deep-sea fish.

>>9875851
Same reason as glass?

We wouldnt be able to see shit if it wasnt

>>9876776
This but unironically
We evolved specifically to be able to differentiate a narrow band of light.
If we could see everything we would see nothing.

Because none of the major components of air have absorption bands at wavelengths that our eyes detect. Some gases, like chlorine, DO have an absorption band in the visible light range (400-700nm), pic related

>>9875886
Ever see mountains on the horizon? Ever wonder why they look purple or blue? You're seeing the air between you and there.

>>9876809
True, but not interesting. The narrow band that we can see also is what it is because creating a biological X ray or Radio detector is non-feasible based on energy and wavelength, respectively. It really is a coincidence that air is permeable to the narrow band of wavelengths that are biologically feasible to detect (though obviously if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have eyes).

Gases are (mostly) invisible to light because for a wave to be appreciably affected by an intervening obstacle, the obstactle has to be around the same size as, or larger than, the wavelength of the object. Gas molecules are ~1 nm in size, so ~1000 nm visible light isn’t affected by them. This picture is naive because it turns out light also behaves in a particle-like way and can interact with a gas molecule that has an energy gap between electron orbitals which is near the energy of the photon, but this is a much higher order effect, so we tend not to notice unless there’s quite a lot of gas. You also have higher order effects like Rayleigh scattering, but again, you need quite a lot of gas.

It isn’t, it’s just very permeable to the range of photons we can see. Given enough distance, it would be as opaque as any wall to us.

>>9876893
so what about glass?

>>9875851
What would be the point of sight if it wasn't?

>>9876901
So clouds are centralized regions of extrasolar zephyr. Very good anon.