Submitted 2 weeks ago by AGoldLovingTomboy@lemmy.cafe to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I asked him “what color were the clouds back then?” and he said they were white.
A simple google will tell anyone the following
The Sun is white. It appears yellow from Earth because of scattering from the atmosphere. Its peak visible light is in the green part of the spectrum.
He could be a liar, I dunno, but he is definitely a doodoo head
We perceive the sun as white. That’s a fairly important distinction.
The reason we perceive the sun as white is surely because the sun has output basically the same spectrum as long as humanity (and a great deal of humanity’s precursors) has existed. We evolved with our eyes considering the spectrum the sun kicks out as fully white light, comprised of the sum total of electromagnetic frequencies we’re able to receive with our eyeballs.
There is no such thing as objective color of any light. Our understanding of color is completely based on our perception of it. If the sun’s peak output were in the 590–625nm range (what we currently perceive as orange) for all that time rather than in the green part of the spectrum it is in reality (500–565nm), we undoubtedly would have evolved to see that particular spectrum combination as white light instead.
All of the above notwithstanding, if the spectrum output of the sun changed overnight like OP’s idiot friend is suggesting, it would be immediately apparent to everyone who isn’t literally blind.
the sun has output basically the same spectrum as long as humanity
Last time I checked, human output was brown.
One point on perception - doesn’t the sun appear somewhat yellow because the blue light has a stronger tendency to scatter, meaning that the roughly white light of the sun is less blue, with all the blue color of the sky being taken away from the color of the sun?
Ok. Devils advocate here. If it did change, and did it gradually, would we notice? And if it changed suddenly wouldn’t we adjust and soon see things as we always have?
The sun is actually green and our brain autocorrects it to white??? What the fuck
Where is the ambient horizon lighting coming from in the right-side of the picture?
I’m pretty sure it’s cgi upon inspection lol
From light pollution. Or it’s just early morning in there.
You should get them a car on monoxide detector.
Underrated comment.
I’m going to take a different stance to a lot of the posters here.
Your friend may be showing signs of undiagnosed mental illness.
If you value him, listen to him and confront him when he has broken away from reality. But don’t argue with him. Be firm in your disagreements but don’t argue.
Be supportive of him if you can. Make sure he has a support network (parents siblings others)
Sometimes mental illness does not manifest until early adulthood.
Know your limits. Care for yourself.
Seconded. The friend is likely going through a mental illness.
because I’m younger than him and vaccinated.
Bruh your friend is a conspiracy theorist. There’s no arguing with him because he already thinks Bill Gates created the Corona virus to exterminate humans so the underground lizard men can retake the surface (actual quote from a conspiracy theorist I used to know, and claimed the same kinda batshit bullshit your friend is saying).
Honestly? Your best bet is to just not engage with them when topics like that come up. Incredibly difficult (sometimes impossible) to get them to realize the fairy tales they’ve convinced themselves are real.
If it gets too much to handle, probably best to cut ties.
Your best bet is to just not engage with them when topics like that come up
real soon it will include any topic
These people will believe batshit insane stuff like this but refuse to believe billionaires are running the world and destroying life for all of us. The disconnect is concerning.
See that’s another thing. He fully believes the illuminati are real. But he doesn’t think it’s the people that are obviously close to that truth in reality (Trump, Musk, Putin, Epstein, etc).
Because that’s not a conspiracy theory.
It’s real and backed by facts. Can’t feel smug with facts everyone knows I guess.
This person is either at lost mildly psychotic or fucking with you. It’s wild that people are down here in the comments offering evidence when the entire concept is entirely absurd. This isn’t an age thing this is a “this person is unhinged, don’t interact.”
Science went from researching medicine and technology, to desperately trying to disprove all the shit dumb people posted on Facebook, like that the earth is flat etc.
While the conclusion of it being replaced with an LED is obviously not what happened, I think it’s very possible that the sun was often orange for him when he was growing up, because of air pollution.
30 years ago, depending on where you lived, there were more cars on the road with less efficient fuel consumption, more people using fireplaces, more people burning trash, less regulation of various industries etc. Searching for images with the phrase “smoke pollution sun” will give you a lot of photos of orange suns, and they’re definitely not all altered for effect. I’ve seen red suns in real life too when wildfires are really bad near my area even though that’s thankfully rare.
We know not the sun itself that is orange, but in a polluted environment it certainly looks like it is - and if you don’t get a great education, I can see how you might think that’s the actual color of the sun.
30+ years ago skies used to be silver in cities from smog. Going across the mountains into Los Angeles could be like going to a different planet.
I mean same for photography, tv, film and even artistic renderings.
This makes some sense. Clearly the friend is a bit of a conspiracy theorist, or trolling. There’s a decent chance they are younger too. That being said you’re the only person with a reasonable feasible explanation that might get through to the friend.
I’ve never considered the colour of the sun. I’m going to get my telescope out and have a look later today!
Careful of your eyes! I’m pretty sure you need a special filter or telescope for the sun
Your friend is a fucking idiot.
Your friend has fallen down a far-right conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Sorry for your loss.
not even necessarily far-right, i jnow plenty of leftists/liberals that are dumb as fuck and believe and horoscopes and other stupid shit like that
sun… LED…
Yeah your friend is an absolute idiot and should ask for his money back from his elementary school
The sun has been around for billions of years and pretty much hasn’t changed color since. Thinking you can “replace” the sun’s “LED” makes me wonder if he is experiencing mental illness, honestly
White LEDs are categorically not 30 year old tech, even if the rest of this theory wasn’t gunpowder caliber guano.
“Gunpowder caliber guano” is an absolutely amazing way to call something batshit insane and I will be taking every available opportunity to use it in conversation from now on.
That’s why it used to be not orange, obviously.
It was in 1993.
I was alove 30 years ago and the sun was exactly the same then as it is now.
Your friend is an idiot.
I’m stupid because I’m younger than him and vaccinated.
Your friend is not for taking seriously.
That’s not a friend. Friendship is between approximate equals and requires respect and trust. He does not trust or respect you. He looks down on you for your age and ignores your valid arguments because of it. If you have any choice in the matter, get away from this person and find people who, even if they disagree, will do so from a place of reason and respect. Do not be fooled into thinking someone is a ‘friend’ just because you interact with them regularly.
Time for a new friend.
Replaced?! 😂
Your friend is beyond repair. Cut your losses.
Everyone knows the sun was not replaced with a giant LED.
LEDs with no heat. It was replaced with a giant halogen bulb.
LEDs produce about half their input energy in heat, with the other half being light. Incandescent bulbs output about 90% as heat and 10% as light.
This can very a lot depending on the LED. The average LED is indeed somewhere around the 50% and 60% mark. But there are LEDs out there that can get up to 90+%
But the sun is hot. You can feel the heat radiating from it.
LEDs are not hot - that’s pretty much the main reason that they’re energy efficient, they don’t waste energy as heat.
It’s not suddenly gotten colder, so if they did switch to LEDs, then they’re also artificially compensating for the heat. Which would completely defeat the purpose of switching (presumably from an incandescent bulb) to LEDs.
Also, I’m super intrigued about who is supposedly behind this sun-bulb maintenance, and more interestingly, what could possibly be powering it
LEDs are not hot
Someones never accidentally touched an LED array.
I can guarantee you an LED array as big as the sun would generate enormous amounts of heat.and would need massive amounts of cooling.
Have you touched strong incandescent lights?
Sure LED arrays are hot, but cooler than old lights
LED chips can’t get above 150 °C or they fail. So high-power LED lights need appropriate cooling. And the heatsink is big and thermally conductive, making it feel hotter to the touch than it is (it delivers more heat to you finger over time). Meanwhile, the glass of some bulbs can exceed 300 °C but cools down to safe levels in a minute (or less if xou touch it with something) because it’s thin.
Also, 150 °C (420 K) objects do radiate heat as black-body radiation but not that much, also it’s far-IR so only detectable with thermal cameras. Meanwhile, a light bulb’s filament is 2700 K (3000 K in halogen ones) and the Sun’s surface is 6000 K, and both produce copious amounts of near-IR light that largely contributes to the heat felt on one’s skin when illuminated.
Power density of the Sun is approximately 276.5 W/m³. That’s counterintuitively little. A classic LED 3mm plastic package has the volume of less than 40 mm³ and some white ones can handle about 100 mW without a heatsink. Even leaving space for connections and airflow, you can easily overpower the Sun by volume by orders of magnitude.
A fun article mentioning that 276.5 W/m³ is about a reptile’s metabolism (and they famously produce little body heat): what-if.xkcd.com/148/
On replacing the Sun with another light source: what-if.xkcd.com/151/
Basically, as this Stack Exchange discussion correctly states, human intuition is quite useless when thinking about things orders of magnitude outside our experience.
Meanwhile, you say “hot” because that’s what your finger felt. Not really convincing of your ability to think in cosmic proportions.
That’s fair - my experience with handling them basically stops at individual LEDs in electronics and domestic LED lightbulbs.
They also add a radiator to keep the charade
That’s … uh … that’s one hell of a LED. Who installed it? From where was this colossal diode purchased? Just, y’know, given the sun has 99.99% of the mass in the solar system, it would’ve taken quite the team. Ask him if it was illegal immigrants, ‘terking the jerb’ of galactic stupidity away from him and his peer group!
Your friend is mentally ill or an idiot, likely both.
Do not let your friend near any literature written by L Ron Hubbard.
Off his rocker.
Your friend is a moron.
You need to upgrade to a better friend.
Your friend is an idiot and if these are his sincerely held beliefs you should just assume everything he ever says is probably wrong.
if sun was orange, it wouldn’t be orange, it would be just precieved as regular white light, and new-orange would be even more oranger than what we know today
but got replaced with a white LED.
time to find a new friend.
there’s no point when someone believes that. move on.
He is clearly stupid if he believes that. Impressively so.
Is your friend RFK?
Other comments are correctly stating that the sun is white, but appears yellow/orange due to the blue light being scattered—but that doesn’t fully address the issue, because objects seen under a white light with an orange filter in front would still have an orange cast.
The difference with the sun is that the scattered blue light is still reaching objects via the light from the rest of the sky—it’s the orange light from the sun combining with the blue light from the sky that makes things appear white.
That person has probably been using ChatGPT. Either that or this post is itself LLM-generated. One or the other.
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
Yes. If the sun was orange, the light would be orange, and everything white would be orange.
The fact that your friend believes the sun was replaced by a giant LED is a sign they should not be your friend anymore
tyrant@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Your friend is either trolling you or a complete idiot.
ttyybb@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d assume trolling
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
No. I know people like this irl.
Not the exact belief, but insane nonetheless. Usually they get all their news from fb and xitter. And theyre always smarter than scientists despite not finishing hs or college (not that one needs to do those things to be smart, but just saying as a rule…)
TomMasz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s likely this isn’t the only conspiracy theory he believes in. Time for you to find better friends,.
gustofwind@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They didn’t replace the sun that would be impossible
They replaced the sky which obviously uses LED imagine trying to run a panel of halogens that big
unknown@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Is that what caused global warming? /s
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
🤣🤣🤣🤣