Red Sunsets

In the airlessness of space, sunlight encounters little resistance as it travels at its fastest speed. If sunlight travels straight down from the sky, it passes through the least amount of atmosphere, slowing some, but not nearly as much as light coming from the horizon. Most of the Earth’s atmosphere lies within about 10 miles (16 km) of the crust, but we can easily see 100 miles (160 km) or more looking across a flat horizon. Therefore, when we view a sunset, we see light that has traveled through at least 10 times more atmosphere than noonday light, and this slows the sunlight, creating beautiful yellow-orange and red sunsets we admire. A simple explanation for this does not exist in modern science because they miscalculated the correct speed of various colors of light. We will learn much more from the new discoveries involving light refraction outlined in Chapter 19, the Length Model.