Why is the sky blue?

Have you ever looked up into the daytime sky and wondered why it's blue and not purple, red or even chartreuse? Well, there is a reason it's blue and it may not be what you think.

Some people think the sky is blue because of the reflection of the blue oceans all over the world. It's not. The reason the sky is blue is simply because of dust, light and molecules to be precise.

The light from the sun bombards the earth with all the colors of the spectrum. When something is, lets say green; we see that color because that particular item absorbs all the colors of light except for green. It will then reflect that color back into the world and we see that item as green. The color of the sky works in much the same exact way.

Our atmosphere is filled with dust particles and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen and those dust particles will reflect light just as anything else will. With a dust particle being incredibly small and those molecules being even smaller that means there is a lot of dust in the air. When the light from the sun hits those particles they absorb every single color except, you guessed it, the color blue. That is why the sky is the color it is during the daytime. In the evening or the early morning the sky will take on colors of red and orange and that is because of the angle the light from the sun is hitting the earth. When the sun is low on the horizon, it's light is weaker and has to travel further to get to the sky. In the process much of the bluer hues are dissipated and more of the red and orange light reaches us causing the varied hues that make for a beautiful beginning and end to a day.

If those particles reflected purple back to us, well, we would have a purple sky. Might be interesting to see that.