In my last post, I theorized about the blue glow around passing vehicles, and the blue light reflecting from a nearby lake, during a sandstorm. My explanation was elegant. It made perfect sense. But I was wrong.
My Uncle Christian, who worked for many years as a chemist in the textile industry, and who knows a lot about color, pointed out the flaw. He noted that blue light has a very short wavelength, and the blue light from the sun would have been largely absorbed by the orangey sand and dust in the air. So my theory about the blue light reaching the earth in greater amounts than usual was not correct.
He thinks that the blue light we saw glowing around the cars and pickups (and which I unfortunately didn’t capture with the camera), could have had something to do with electrostatic charges that build up during sandstorms. Electrostatic charge builds when electrons are blown off or rubbed off of dust particles in a sandstorm, or when you brush your hair in dry weather.
We are still trying to find out exactly what the phenomenon was, but it could be that the vehicles moving through the charged sand particle caused a discharge, which we saw as a blue glow.
The same thing probably was the case with the waves on the lake. And I wonder if the electrostatic charge of the sandstorm had some effect on the week-old fire that suddenly came back to life that day.
There’s a lot of literature online about sandstorms in space, particularly on Mars. Here’s a bit of information I found at http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/solsyscol.html.
Showers of electrons striking the moon’s thin atmosphere give rise to a blue glow.
Here’s another interesting thing about blue, which I know is true. No speculation this time. You have heard of red-hot, I’m sure. Of course we all know that white-hot is hotter still than red-hot. Believe it or not, there is something even hotter than white-hot: blue-hot.
You know the blue flame from a gas stove? It’s hotter than an orange/red flame. The gas burns very pure, with not much waste, so it’s hotter—and blue!