The Color of Covid

Sometimes, children will do the darndest things.  As a child, I remember occasionally looking at the sun.  Not a glance… but, just less than a full out stare.  What was I thinking?  Thankfully, somehow I didn’t go blind.  (Actually, until hitting 40, I have been blessed with much better than average vision for a male.)

What color was the sun?

Asking students what they think the color of the sun is gets the typical responses.  We are familiar with the color of a sunset, as the sun’s light is filtered by the atmosphere it looks a fiery yellow, then orange, maybe red.  

If you asked me as a kid, I’d say, “white.”  I was usually looking at midday.  (How did I not go blind??)

But, white isn’t a color.

As a kid, I was very inquisitive.  The numerous dumb things I and other kids (especially our friend M-S-) in my neighborhood did out of curiosity, wanting to have fun, curious to learn first hand, would make a few good episodes of The Wonder Years.  I was ready to list a bunch of them, but realized each of them could easily lead to a major disaster if repeated.  Maybe here’s an exception: if you put your hand under a heavy piece of metal (in my case it was a small hand anvil) which is big and doesn’t want to move - lots of inertia, and then strike it hard with a wood dowel rod, or maybe a broom handle, you don’t get hurt.  Well, as long as you don’t miss it.    Very curious.

White isn’t a color.  In our vision, it means the red, blue, and green cones in our eyes are all firing impulses to our brain.  Interesting thing,.. if you get too close to a bright red light, or a green light, or a blue light with a camera, or an eye (I can’t recommend this - remember, eye damage - bad.. And, yes, as a kid I did try this), it looks white.  You really don’t have to try to experience this one.  If you’ve driven at night, you’ve experienced this from those piercing super bright blue colored headlights on some cars.  As they get closer, the blue disappears as we become blinded.

So, what color is the sun?

To really know, perhaps we’d have to be a lot farther away, without a lot of atmosphere coloring the image.  Pluto distance?  Alpha Centauri distance?

But, aren’t all stars white?

The thing is no.  Find a clear, dark sky and take a look.  Some are blue.  Some are red.  And some are green.  (Sorry, for those color blind folks out there!)

A Professor Wien came up with a relationship between black bodies and the dominant wavelength of the body.  The color of the object.  Stars aren’t exactly black bodies, but pretty darn close.  And our star has a dominant temperature, and a dominant color.

Google puts the sun’s temperature at 5778 K.  An online Wien’s law calculator kicks out 5015 Angstrom.  What color is 5015 Angstrom?  

Funny, how being too close to something can make it very difficult to see the true color.  Consider, astronomers on our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, looking our way.  They would say, hey there’s that —- star.  They’d see our star’s dominant color.

I think about this as we are trying to make sense of the COVID-19 impact on our world.  What is the color of this disease?  Are we still too close to see how to best handle it?

I am very thankful to the first responders, and also the many scientists who are working to find the “Wien’s Law” for overcoming this crisis,.. and any future similar ones to come.  While many have reported the state of this pandemic while in the white of the crisis, perhaps we should remember the accuracy will improve as we distance ourselves, and look for good feedback and evaluation from those who have gone through the peer review process of medical science.

Knowing the color of the sun, makes it possible to have solar panels which work, and plants which grow.  Through our brief history, scientists have found the color of polio, smallpox, various types of cancer, and much more.  COVID-19 is on their radar.  It is not our last threat.  But, fortunately, there are some tenacious scientists out there.  Go get ‘em.

John