Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Gases Opaque to Infrared "Light"

An important piece of the Greenhouse Effect puzzle is the fact that not all gases pass all frequencies of light equally well. All colors (frequencies) of visible light travel very well through the gases in our everyday world (nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide...), so we aren't familiar with any particular color of light not getting through a gas. Actually there is one big exception to this: blue light doesn't get through our atmosphere as easily as red light.

more to come

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