Tuesday 31 March 2009

The moon is white

The moon is black. ('Actually, overall the moon's surface is about the shade of an asphalt highway. It absorbs almost all the light that hits it. The moon appears pearly white to us only because of the tiny fraction of light that's reflected off the lunar blacktop.')

The sun is white. ('Puffy cumulous clouds on a sunny day are certainly bright enough to excite the cone cells in our eyes, so we should be able to detect any hints of color in them. They do reflect equally well all the wavelengths of light striking them, most of which comes from the Sun. So if the Sun is really yellow [and not white], then clouds should be yellow. But they aren't. And that goes to show that the Sun itself is much more whitish than it is yellowish')

Things are not always as they seem in black and white.

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