Why Is The Sky Blue?
If you’re like me, you once woke up from surgery talking about mirrors. I don’t remember what the recovery room nurse asked me, probably something simple like “how are you feeling?” My response was to explain why mirrors confound me from a physics standpoint. According to my wife, this is one of the more logical things I have ever said when coming out of a deep sleep.
I do like thinking about mirrors though because they present an odd situation. We all know how words will read backwards in a mirror. That’s what the whole “redrum” thing is based on in “The Shining.” My question is this though: Why aren’t they upside down? Why does a mirror flip images horizontally but not vertically? And it’s not just because our eyes are aligned horizontally because if you cover one eye, it has the same result. What is unique about the vertical axis?
The sky offers a similar conundrum. The question “Why is the sky blue?” is one of those fun questions to ask your parents and see their face scrunch up before they say, “well, ‘cause it is.” Maybe though, you asked a scientist. They will likely give some response involving Rayleigh Scattering, which focuses on short light waves getting scattered more proportionately to long waves. Blue is a short wave compared to red, so the sky is blue.
Simple enough. If you know your rainbow colors though, you should already see where this is going. Violet has shorter wavelengths than blue, that’s why it’s at the end of “ROY G. BIV.” Why isn’t the sky violet?
The above questions aren’t mysteries. They both have good answers. (For fun, I won’t be providing them though.) Those answers require a shifting of perspective and an expansion of our understating of the world we inhabit. Sometimes our perception of the world is little more than a side effect.
The Bee Orchid is named for the bee-like growths it uses to attract male bees. The male bees think they have found a female bee on the plant and in attempting to mate with it, help pollinate the Bee Orchid. At least, they used to. That particular species of bee is extinct, and the Bee Orchid has had to evolve to self-pollination.
We look at the Bee Orchid and find it pretty because it’s bright purple and green with a fun pattern. That appearance though has been refined over generations to appeal not to us, but to an entirely different species. And one that’s now extinct. There is an entire world of interaction at play in that story beyond our conceiving. All we perceive in that flower though, is an attractive arrangement of colors.
In contemplating these odd paradigms, I’m reminded of a Zen Buddhist concept, a kōan. A kōan is a statement or question posed to Zen students to encourage great doubt. Classic examples are “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” or “If a tree falls in the woods and nobody’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?” There are entire books of similar examples all focused on posing a situation that requires doubting of your own perception of the world.
What does it all mean?
It means you should always be doubting your perception. This isn’t a conspiracy theory rant, I’m not suggesting the world around you is a lie. The world around you is intricate and complex though. And I would offer, infinitely fascinating for it. Sometimes our perception needs to shift. Sometimes, our reality needs to be doubted. In doubting, we open ourselves up to more complete understanding.
