Murray’s 60sec Science Contemplation – Rainbows

When you see a rainbow I want you to consider something VERY important. What you see is unique to you and you alone and it took anywhere between 10,000 and 200,000 years to make (taking into account a near-infinite set of circumstances of chance to create the beauty of nature that you see).
This means the rainbow you see is older than many civilisations on earth. Once a photon is born (through some of the most powerful nuclear fusion reactions in the universe) it takes between 10,000 and 200,000 years to move from the core of the sun to its surface… then it races the 150,000,000km to rendezvous with earth (which is also travelling at 107,000km/h) to strike the atmosphere in just the right way with just the right evaporated water content to enable the photon’s wavelengths to be split into a myriad of colours (both of which we can and can’t see) which are then reflected back from other water droplets to beam into our eyes and be converted into electrochemical signals travelling to our visual cortex to be interpreted as the rainbow we see.
And since our eyes and receptors are slightly different and the way our visual cortex works is slightly different for each person… the resulting rainbow is therefore different (ever so slightly)…
But here’s the best part. That rainbow now becomes part of you. The conversion of energy from the sun’s nuclear fusion to light to electrochemical in your brain coverts once more into chemical energy stored as memories … which becomes part of you… forever.