this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Actually that's us seeing light.
Edit: specifically, the light wavelength that remains at passing through the atmosphere. We're but seeing the air still, we're just seeing the color that makes it through to us. Saying that's the air itself would be like saying you see the cities filtration system by looking at the clean water that comes from a faucet.
A better example of actually seeing air would be to freeze it, and seeing the literal frozen air.
Responding to your edit:
You've got it the wrong way around. What you see at sunset, the reds and yellows, that's the sunlight being filtered because those wavelengths make it through stronger. Your argument would hold there, if we do not count seeing filtered light as "seeing" the filtering material. (Although even that I'd question - if you hold a colored piece of glass against a light source so it's entirely backlit, would you say you're not seeing it?)
But the blue sky is not that. It is the air molecules being illuminated by light coming from somewhere else, and bouncing that light back into your eyes, with a bias towards blue wavelengths. If that does not count as "seeing" air, then you also can't actually "see" fog, it's the same mechanism.
That's what seeing is. Light. You can't actually directly observe the atoms that make something up. You can see the light that is reflected/emitted from that object.
Light bouncing off of air molecules, yes. That's how seeing things works
Do you see your own eyes? Like without a mirror
No. Why is that relevant?
I was extremely baked when I asked that but I think it was a question about how some light will reflect off your eye into your eye therefore you're seeing your own eyes.
I guess having floaters, or that weird effect of seeing your white blood cells in the capillaries on your retina would probably count haha