The Glory

And at the center of that, though too small to see, is the shadow of the airplane. When seen from mountaintops, the shadow of your body can be large enough to see, and is known as "the Spectre of the Brocken"

Do a google image search for "spectre of the Brocken"
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=spectre+of+the+brocken&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0

I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Sane person translation:

I promise not to viciously and cruelly destroy every living creature on the face of the earth ever again. At least not by flood; who knows what else I can come up with.

This and other similar phenomena are discussed in the book "Science from Your Airplane Window" by Elizabeth A. Wood - see http://www.amazon.com/Science-Your-Airplane-Window-Elizabeth/dp/0486232050

Once, when I was flying from Spitzbergen to Oslo, I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a perfect reflection of the Sun in the clouds beneath (which I thought was impossible). It had disappeared by the time I grabbed my camera, but I wonder if this was what I saw. I just didn't see the coloured rings. Pity the book by Elizabeth Wood isn't available.

Wayne Robinson said: Once, when I was flying from Spitzbergen to Oslo, I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a perfect reflection of the Sun in the clouds beneath

Paul Burnett said: This and other similar phenomena are discussed in the book "Science from Your Airplane Window" by Elizabeth A. Wood - see http://www.amazon.com/Science-Your-Airplane-Window-Elizabeth/dp/0486232050

One thing I've found interesting is that from a plane (or possibly from a mountain as well?) a rainbow can be a complete circle. From the ground it's usually just the upper half of a circle due to being interrupted by the ground.

RDK said: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Sane person translation: I promise not to viciously and cruelly destroy every living creature on the face of the earth ever again. At least not by flood; who knows what else I can come up with.

When I visited Victoria falls a few years back we got treated to a double rainbow, one right above the other. It was really spectacular.

And at the center of that, though too small to see, is the shadow of the airplane.

Olorin said:

Wayne Robinson said: Once, when I was flying from Spitzbergen to Oslo, I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a perfect reflection of the Sun in the clouds beneath

This might have been a "sun dog," usually seen from the ground as as a pair of images at either side of the sun, and sometimes a third image above the sun. Sun dogs result from refraction in ice-laden air.

I suspect that the shadow could be washed out by a small amount of scattering. In other words, light shining through the atmosphere is a bit diffuse and may not stay collimated.

...and its your, personal Spectre - like a rainbow each one is unique for the particular optical alignment between you, the sun, and the scattering, so what you see isn't quite the same as the thing the person next to you sees.

What a coincidence! I saw this exact thing on a trip last week. I figured the circle for a kind of rainbow effect, but I hadn't a clue about the trailing dark line. Thanks for explaining it.

Yes, but what's the golden cross shape in the left of the picture, pointing up to the left at about a 30 degree angle? :-)

I still don't get it.... No matter which way I turn it or how hard I squint and I still don't see Jesus.

Just Bob said:

RDK said: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Sane person translation: I promise not to viciously and cruelly destroy every living creature on the face of the earth ever again. At least not by flood; who knows what else I can come up with.

But the purpose of the rainbow is what really puzzles me. God states (and repeats--Noah must have been a slow learner [or chronically drunk?]) that the rainbow signifies a promise by God that He will never flood out the whole Earth again. Most creationists I know are dead certain that God WILL destroy the Earth (and soon!), but just not with water next time (most seem to favor fire, but personally I expect it to be peanut butter [extra chunky]). But wait--if God reserves the right to destroy all mankind, then what's the point of promising not to use water again? We won't be drowned again, but burnt to cinders? Thanks a lot.

eric said: When I visited Victoria falls a few years back we got treated to a double rainbow, one right above the other. It was really spectacular.

YEC here.
Its a interesting point for biblical creationists that since it seems from scripture the rainbow did not exist until the end of the flood then this evidence of a different nature to the atmosphere.
So what was before was not what was after and what was after is not a accurate trail to past nature.
This also comes up with the long lives that people had back in the day.

I saw one of these a few years ago flying a small plane over Goodwood. Until now I didn't know that it was called a Glory but thought it was an artifact caused by sunlight shining through the propeller onto the clouds below because we flew the plane down straight through the bull's eye - a weird sensation.

Don't be silly Robert. From reading all your previous posts I am under the impression you really do take the OT a bit too literally sometimes. You will be tell us that it is evidence the earth once had corners and stood on pillars next.

Enough said from this lurker! I leave the option of "troll-slaying" and/or feeding to those more learned in the ways of science than myself.

The dark line to the right is the contrail.

Contrast has been enhanced.

And yet more rainbow nonsense: God states multiple times that it will be in a cloud, He will “set [His] bow in the cloud.” Rainbows aren’t formed or seen “in clouds.” They appear when the sun shines on raindrops and is refracted back at the proper angle to the viewer.

True, but in this case the roundel is formed on the surface of the top of the clouds - as seen from above.

Just Bob said:

RDK said: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Sane person translation: I promise not to viciously and cruelly destroy every living creature on the face of the earth ever again. At least not by flood; who knows what else I can come up with.

OK, here's my $.02 worth on biblical rainbow physics: Then there's the rainbow. If you want to hear some really creative additions to Genesis, ask a young-Earther how there could be no rainbows for a couple thousand years, until after the Flood. You may get some truly bizarre planetary climate models, involving such things as water soaking up through the ground to keep plants alive (let's see--if there is so much water underground that it soaks UP to the surface, isn't that what we call a bog? Some paradise!),or a "vapor canopy" that watered the Earth with a kind of fog, then fell as the Flood rains. If you think conditions on Venus are hellish, try modeling the atmospheric conditions on an Earth with all the gigatons of ocean water added to the atmosphere! If Adam's descendants were protected from such incredible temperatures and pressures (the natural physical result of such super-greenhouse conditions) by some sort of miraculous intervention, then again this is not creation science, just creation magic. (I've heard creationists attribute the mythical long life spans of Old Testament notables to such atmospheric conditions. I invite them to try it for themselves to see if it promotes longevity.) But the purpose of the rainbow is what really puzzles me. God states (and repeats--Noah must have been a slow learner [or chronically drunk?]) that the rainbow signifies a promise by God that He will never flood out the whole Earth again. Most creationists I know are dead certain that God WILL destroy the Earth (and soon!), but just not with water next time (most seem to favor fire, but personally I expect it to be peanut butter [extra chunky]). But wait--if God reserves the right to destroy all mankind, then what's the point of promising not to use water again? We won't be drowned again, but burnt to cinders? Thanks a lot. And yet more rainbow nonsense: God states multiple times that it will be in a cloud, He will "set [His] bow in the cloud." Rainbows aren't formed or seen "in clouds." They appear when the sun shines on raindrops and is refracted back at the proper angle to the viewer. They are often seen against a backdrop of clouds, but they are not in the clouds. As a matter of fact, the rainbow doesn't even exist where it appears to be! It's an optical illusion that's "in" the light reaching viewers at the proper angle from sun and rain. You can fly a plane through the exact spot where a ground viewer reports seeing a rainbow. You won't see anything around you but air and water. You can also make your own rainbows with a garden hose in full sunlight--no clouds required at all. One more: God states unequivocally that the rainbow is to remind Him of the no-Flood clause. If God has such a faulty memory that He needs such cosmic Post-it Notes, we're in BIG trouble.

Flounder said: I still don't get it.... No matter which way I turn it or how hard I squint and I still don't see Jesus.

Shelldigger said: Just a few days ago, I was tossing a baseball around with my two boys. I threw a nice "pop fly" and as my son moved to get under the ball to make the catch, he just stopped, the ball hit the ground, and I was like wtf? He said "look up at the cloud" and damn if there wasnt a really cool rainbow in the cloud. Not your typical rainbow, it was confined to the cloud. I got some good shots of it. I would certainly share the pics if anyone wants to see them. (from an older 3.1 mp camera but they came out really good) I guessed this was a glory of sorts. Not real sure what the proper definition is for a glory. I thought they were seen from planes and/or mountain tops. Not real familiar with the format for quoting here, so I replied to the entire post. This is to rebutt the notion that you dont see rainbows in clouds. I just did and have the evidence.

Robert Byers said: YEC here. Its a interesting point for biblical creationists that since it seems from scripture the rainbow did not exist until the end of the flood then this evidence of a different nature to the atmosphere.

Richard: We won’t be drowned again, but burnt to cinders? Thanks a lot.

Genesis 9: 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though [a] every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. 22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

raven said: Which means, there should never be an Endtimes destruction again like the Rapture Monkeys fervently believe.

But just so long as the ocean-vent tubeworms are safe and happy, God has kept his word.

stevaroni said:

raven said: Which means, there should never be an Endtimes destruction again like the Rapture Monkeys fervently believe.

No, he said that he wouldn't destroy all living creatures. Yes, he might leave most of the planet a desolated, post-apocalyptic wasteland where the only people left spend their days wandering from one dead midwestern town to the next in long coats and cool sunglasses, bartering gasoline, delivering old mail and having slow-motion swordfights with zombies in dramatic silhouette.

Shelldigger said: Just a few days ago, I was tossing a baseball around with my two boys. I threw a nice "pop fly" and as my son moved to get under the ball to make the catch, he just stopped, the ball hit the ground, and I was like wtf? He said "look up at the cloud" and damn if there wasnt a really cool rainbow in the cloud. Not your typical rainbow, it was confined to the cloud. I got some good shots of it. I would certainly share the pics if anyone wants to see them. (from an older 3.1 mp camera but they came out really good)

RDK said: Do I get a cookie for recognizing this reference?

I'm having a fun time imagining water with the same refractive index as air- invisible raindrops, puddles and ponds? Or yhwh could have made water refract colors to the same degree. Or maybe the Sun was monochromatic Back Then.

stevaroni said: Actually, it was just the first stuff I could remember from the whole post-apocalypse movie milieu, which always seems to require sunglasses and dusters and promote interaction with zombies. But I now realize I missed both psychic dogs and itinerant sailors bartering dirt.

Could it be a newton ring? As a graphic designer, scanning 4x5 transparancies with an eye for accuracy and color reproduction, I have battled with newton rings more times than I care to remember.

stevaroni said: ...at the Creation Museum. They have a historically accurate diorama of Adam and Eve standing in a waterfall surrounded by tiny dinosaurs - Eve was pretty hot, apparently

stevaroni said: But I now realize I missed both psychic dogs....

Paul Burnett said:

stevaroni said: ...at the Creation Museum. They have a historically accurate diorama of Adam and Eve standing in a waterfall surrounded by tiny dinosaurs - Eve was pretty hot, apparently

Are you intimating that Eve was emitting pheromones that atracted dinosaurs? That's pretty kinky, isn't it?

stevaroni said: Yes, Robert, that is true. It is evidence of a different atmosphere, or at least a different environment.

stevaroni said: I think there's some sort of religious ethnic modification field at work, that subtly modifies the nose eyes and skintones of extremely holy persons.

Is this a contrail (where condensation occurs in a clear sky and produces a line of "cloud"). Or is it a distrail (where the cloud is dispersed forming a hole or a clear line in a layer of cloud)?

Matt Young said: Sorry - I shd have said it is the shadow of the contrail. But now I wonder whether it is so - since we can't see the shadow of the plane itself, why do we see the shadow of the contrail? Regarding contrast: The picture appeared less contrasty than I had remembered it, so I enhanced it to make it slightly more contrasty (and darker) than I had remembered it.

Matt Young said: But now I wonder whether it is so - since we can't see the shadow of the plane itself, why do we see the shadow of the contrail?

If this was taken with a CCD camera, it is possible that the automatic exposure adjustment the camera makes has reduced the saturation in the center of the glory. This saturation could have obliterated the shadow of the plane. Reducing the saturation level for proper exposure would not bring out that shadow.

There is also another effect that is probably taking place here that is analogous to an “anti-slit” diffraction pattern. If, instead of a slit in which the light going to the diffraction grating or prism comes through a slit in an opaque screen we reverse the slit and the opaque screen, the diffraction color pattern is the inverse of the regular slit colors (cyan, magenta, yellow instead of red, blue, green). It’s a nice demo using a diffraction grating on top of an overhead projector.

Because the exhaust expands and cools as the airplane leaves it behind, thus creating the condensation that makes up the contrail. The contrail becomes much wider than the plane. I haven't seen a glory very often, but I've more often seen the shadow of the contrail on the clouds below.

I once had the pleasure of such a view on a flight descending into DFW. Also got the miniature silhouette in the middle. I made mention and soon nearly all were craning for a glimpse.

I remember a moment of shared wonder and comprehension that seemed to fill the fuselage, if only for a fleeting moment.

sigh

Surrounded by such wonders improbabilities and improprieties on a grand and woeful scale are commonly entertained; and applied to daily life.

sigh, again

Matt Young said: Nope - the pic was underexposed (deliberately). Saturation is a dirty word around here.

I don’t get that. It’s kind of hard to see the blue fringe, but it looks as if the colors are what you’d expect from a circular aperture, where the longer-wavelength red is diffracted farther out than the blue. The droplets are equivalent to an aperture, not an obstacle. Even so, I don’t see why it would be any different for a circular obstacle – by Babinet’s principle, the diffraction patterns will be the same, outside the direct beam. Am I missing something?

Mike Elzinga said: I’m not seeing blue or red in this picture. I do see the yellow however.

Attempting to be a little clearer here (while avoiding technical jargon).

When viewing a rainbow, one’s head is not in line with the sun. The sun is like the aperture in the opaque screen, and the raindrops are the “refraction” grating sending the dispersed spectrum back to the eye.

With the glory, the spectrum is centered on where the shadow of the observer is. The observer is, in effect, the inverse of the aperture in the above case. One would expect to see complimentary colors.

It may be my clumsiness in identifying colors, but it seems to me that what others are calling blue (near the center of the glory and in a ring outside the yellow and magenta) is cyan.

Now it is not to be expected that this will be complete flipping to complementary colors in the case of the airplane because it is not a circular dot.

I see or think I see, from the center outward, white, gray, blue, yellow, orange, red, all very pale indeed. Those represent the first secondary maxima of the diffraction patterns at different wavelengths. Then the pattern repeats -- or tries to repeat -- and you can see some of the next secondary maxima, primarily the red.

I still do not see why you expect the pattern to change to the complementary colors when you change to the complementary screen. Maybe that is because I am used to finding infinity in the focal plane of a lens, where the undiffracted light is concentrated in a point. Still working on that.

Matt Young said: I see or think I see, from the center outward, white, gray, blue, yellow, orange, red, all very pale indeed. Those represent the first secondary maxima of the diffraction patterns at different wavelengths. Then the pattern repeats -- or tries to repeat -- and you can see some of the next secondary maxima, primarily the red. I still do not see why you expect the pattern to change to the complementary colors when you change to the complementary screen. Maybe that is because I am used to finding infinity in the focal plane of a lens, where the undiffracted light is concentrated in a point. Still working on that.

The sun is like the aperture in the opaque screen, and the raindrops are the “refraction” grating sending the dispersed spectrum back to the eye.

Look in the fourier transform plane.

At any one wavelength, the pattern you see is, approximately, the diffraction pattern of a circular aperture whose diameter is equal to the diameter of the raindrops or the droplets that make up the cloud.

Matt Young said: If this is getting too abstruse for everyone, we can continue it privately.

Matt Young said: Thought experiment: Take a transmission diffraction grating and observe its diffraction pattern. Slide it laterally by one-half period. Now it is the equivalent of the complementary screen, but its diffraction pattern is unchanged, except for a phase shift of pi.

I’ll have to dig through my old notes and calculations, buried deep in my closets (I hope), on stuff I did over 30 years ago. I changed fields several time since then, and then retired a number of years ago.

So I feel like an old geezer groping around for old memories of things long forgotten.

But for those who are interested in trying out the demo, here is what you need.

An overhead projector works. You can also do this with other types of white light projectors as well, but you then have to set things up horizontally.

You will need a piece of heavy, black paper in which you cut a very narrow slit. Make it long and narrow. Two pieces of heavy stock manila folder paper brought close together to form a narrow slit also works, but is a bit hard to control with the projector fan blowing on them. Tape them in position and weight them down.

You will also need a diffraction grating. Fairly cheap ones on plastic film 8.5 by 11 inches can be obtained from a number of places such as Edmund Scientific.

Place the slit on the projector and block all ambient light going around the lens. Turn off the room lights.

You can find a place between the slit and the lens that puts a sharp pattern on the screen. You can find a place beyond the lens (between the lens and the screen) that also works.

After you play around to get a clear rainbow spectrum, remove the slit and replace it with a thin strip of opaque material where the slit was. This means that a lot of light is coming through and around the projecting lens. Block as much of that stray light around the lens as possible. Put the diffraction grating back where you had it before (or just fasten there once you have found the proper focus). You should see what appears like a washed out spectrum, but note carefully the colors.

Slit widths on the order of a millimeter or so seem to work well. Experiment.

The explanation is a bit subtle; and I am going to try to refresh my memory before I continue making a fool of myself.

Mike Elzinga said: You can find a place between the slit and the lens that puts a sharp pattern on the screen. You can find a place beyond the lens (between the lens and the screen) that also works.

stevaroni said:

Robert Byers said: YEC here. Its a interesting point for biblical creationists that since it seems from scripture the rainbow did not exist until the end of the flood then this evidence of a different nature to the atmosphere.

Yes, Robert, that is true. It is evidence of a different atmosphere, or at least a different environment. Unfortunately, it is evidence of an environment that humans couldn't survive, an environment where nobody ever witnessed significant water vapor in the air. Basically, a planet where it never rained and where no mechanism ever threw finely atomized water into the air on a sunny day. Now, much of the Middle East is pretty dry (although it was probably much more forested in Biblical times) but never seeing a rainbow requires a hard-core Dune type desert. That doesn't square with the original Garden of Eden image. I suspect they had water (you can see for yourself at the Creation Museum. They have a historically accurate diorama of Adam and Eve standing in a waterfall surrounded by tiny dinosaurs - Eve was pretty hot, apparently). And an extremely dry environment also doesn't explain the myriad of rain-forest animals that Noah apparently saved, animals that can only live in a moist environment (tropical frogs, for example) and, more importantly, it doesn't explain how Noah would would have grown up in the equivalent of the modern Sahara, would have even known what a "boat" was, much less be able to guess how to build one. Robert once again illustrates one of the most annoying traits of creationists. The idea that they "win" the argument if they just make up an explanation, without any curiosity at all to further explore whether or not said explanation actually makes any sense. That's how they like to play the game. They don't actually feel the need to get out on the field and make the goal. Actually doing that requires hard work. Instead, they just want to jot down a point in their column of the scorecard and claim the game is now a tie.

Robert,

Don't listen to those other "Darwinists." I'm the only one who wants to help you get your "theory" into the mainstream.

I know you reply to them and not to me. I can't blame you for being suspicious with so many "Darwinists" ridiculing you, but I'm really here to help. Soon I will be posting on Talk.Origins another request for proposals. This one will be right up your alley. I envision big funding for your research. No one on TO has "expelled" any proposals for my last (2007) RFP, so you are assured equal opportunity.

For now I ask you to do what many other anti-evolutionists do, which is to ignore the Bible and just concentrate on the independent evidence for your young Earth. You can still immerse yourself in the Bible after work hours. And you can rub it in our faces that you validated one of the mutually contradictory "literal" interpretations after you develop your "theory."

Another request I have that will help you immensely is to ignore evolution and "Darwinism." If you want to be taken seriously by the scientific community, including evangelical Christians like Francis Collins, you must support your "theory" on its own merits, not on long-refuted "weaknesses" of "Darwinism," or worse, it's alleged "evils." If you must contrast your "theory" with an inferior one there are many long-discredited OEC "theories" to choose from.

Good luck!

Robert, who is this witness you keep saying wrote the Genesis account?

Just Bob said:

Shelldigger said: Just a few days ago, I was tossing a baseball around with my two boys. I threw a nice "pop fly" and as my son moved to get under the ball to make the catch, he just stopped, the ball hit the ground, and I was like wtf? He said "look up at the cloud" and damn if there wasnt a really cool rainbow in the cloud. Not your typical rainbow, it was confined to the cloud. I got some good shots of it. I would certainly share the pics if anyone wants to see them. (from an older 3.1 mp camera but they came out really good) I guessed this was a glory of sorts. Not real sure what the proper definition is for a glory. I thought they were seen from planes and/or mountain tops. Not real familiar with the format for quoting here, so I replied to the entire post. This is to rebutt the notion that you dont see rainbows in clouds. I just did and have the evidence.

But again, was it IN a cloud, or just seen against a backdrop of clouds? Unless it was a pretty thin cloud, I'm not sure how you could see something IN the cloud anyway. I mean that's where all those fighter pilots flee to in every dogfight movie when their guns jam! And Byers: Thanks for a great example of what YECs do when faced with literal absurdities in the OT--you just make shit up.

Dave Luckett said: Robert, who is this witness you keep saying wrote the Genesis account?

Shelldigger, how were the colors arranged? Was it a really big rainbow pattern with horizontal bands of color, taking the shape of the wispy cloud?

That's a circumhorizontal arc; they are formed by light refracting in a certain way through ice crystals shaped like horizontally oriented hexagonal plates (if conditions are right, they'll orient themselves that way as they fall through the air). I've seen one once, and it was very pretty. Those wispy cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals, and the circumhorizontal arc is a large enough arc that the colors often cover the entire cloud.

There was a widely circulated email a while back showing a picture of one and calling it a "fire rainbow", which is a misnomer.

...If the cloud had to be near the solar point, then it was more likely one of the more common types of ice halo. (That whole site is nice, by the way.)

So if there were two distinct sizes of raindrops mixed together there'd be two distinct color patterns of different sizes?

Robert Byers said: Actually its a favorite point of historical creationism that it never rain until the flood. The bible says a mist went up to water the garden and probably the whole earth. it would of probably been a richer world therefore in biology.

Robert Byers said: Actually its a favorite point of historical creationism that it never rain until the flood. The bible says a mist went up to water the garden and probably the whole earth. it would of probably been a richer world therefore in biology.

I think the primary colors subtract from the "white light spike" in just the right way to produce the complementary spectrum.

He said "look up at the cloud" and damn if there wasnt a really cool rainbow in the cloud. Not your typical rainbow, it was confined to the cloud. I got some good shots of it. I would certainly share the pics if anyone wants to see them.

Matt Young said:

I think the primary colors subtract from the "white light spike" in just the right way to produce the complementary spectrum.

OK, it may be becoming clear. I suspect that what you're saying is that the source is extended, so that the zero-order spike is broad. In that case, the (intensity) diffraction patterns of the screen and its complement would not be the same, because the phase would matter. Have to try it sometime!

Robert Byers said:

stevaroni said:

Robert Byers said: YEC here. Its a interesting point for biblical creationists that since it seems from scripture the rainbow did not exist until the end of the flood then this evidence of a different nature to the atmosphere.

Yes, Robert, that is true. It is evidence of a different atmosphere, or at least a different environment. Unfortunately, it is evidence of an environment that humans couldn't survive, an environment where nobody ever witnessed significant water vapor in the air. Basically, a planet where it never rained and where no mechanism ever threw finely atomized water into the air on a sunny day. Now, much of the Middle East is pretty dry (although it was probably much more forested in Biblical times) but never seeing a rainbow requires a hard-core Dune type desert. That doesn't square with the original Garden of Eden image. I suspect they had water (you can see for yourself at the Creation Museum. They have a historically accurate diorama of Adam and Eve standing in a waterfall surrounded by tiny dinosaurs - Eve was pretty hot, apparently). And an extremely dry environment also doesn't explain the myriad of rain-forest animals that Noah apparently saved, animals that can only live in a moist environment (tropical frogs, for example) and, more importantly, it doesn't explain how Noah would would have grown up in the equivalent of the modern Sahara, would have even known what a "boat" was, much less be able to guess how to build one. Robert once again illustrates one of the most annoying traits of creationists. The idea that they "win" the argument if they just make up an explanation, without any curiosity at all to further explore whether or not said explanation actually makes any sense. That's how they like to play the game. They don't actually feel the need to get out on the field and make the goal. Actually doing that requires hard work. Instead, they just want to jot down a point in their column of the scorecard and claim the game is now a tie.

Actually its a favorite point of historical creationism that it never rain until the flood. The bible says a mist went up to water the garden and probably the whole earth. it would of probably been a richer world therefore in biology.

When no plant of the field was yet in the Earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up. the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the land, and watered the whole surface of the ground. (Genesis 2:5-6; Amplified)

Matt Young said: If this is getting too abstruse for everyone, we can continue it privately.

It’s not like we here are afraid of science, or something. Well, except for the Trolls, of course. :-)

— Scott

Scott said:

Matt Young said: If this is getting too abstruse for everyone, we can continue it privately.

Dear Mike and Matt, Don't you dare continue this privately. :-) If one can't get his science minutiae fix here, where is one to go? It's even on topic! It's not like we here are afraid of science, or something. Well, except for the Trolls, of course. :-)

The more challenging and interesting problem will be to translate the explanation into language that laypersons can understand.

Just in case we want to get specific about the spectrum we are seeing, here is what I think I see, going from the center outward.

Grey,
Magenta,
Cyan,
Grey?,
Yellow,
Magenta? (could be faded orange and red),
Cyan,
Very faded yellow,
Magenta,
Very faded cyan.

There appear to be further alternating rings of very faded cyan and magenta, but I am really pushing my limits at this point.

I am fairly confident I am not seeing blue or green, and I am not sure about the red and orange.

By the way, I copied this picture and inverted it. In that inversion I definitely see the complements of cyan (red), magenta(green), and yellow (blue).

The more challenging and interesting problem will be to translate the explanation into language that laypersons can understand.

— Mike Elzinga

Frank J said: Since you mention color, it is a subject that has always fascinated me, and does even more now that I'm a stickler for defining terms unequivocally. Color names are often a matter of personal preference. Sometimes there are "official" descriptions of color names, but they are often quite different than the common ones. Seeing the actual color prevents people from envisioning different things.

Which of course brings us right back to anti-evolutionists. Even the ones who don’t realize what they are doing are skilled at switching definitions. They love to toss about bogus calculations about the “improbability” of evolution or abiogeneis (and conflate the two) but ask them for numbers about their “theory,” especially the “when” numbers, and see how they change the subject.

Mike Elzinga said: However, as various filters are gradually applied to the white light illumination, we adapt and still identify the same colors correctly. The really startling part of this demonstration comes when he pops up the original scene right next to the highly filtered scene. We suddenly see that what we took as normal is anything but normal; rather it is a grotesque distortion of the colors we had already identified correctly. Most of the colors were not what we would have called them in white light illumination.

Here it is.

— eric

Frank J said:

Here it is.

— eric

I did not disbelieve you, but would have done the same thing even if I did, which is to test it for myself (something anti-evolutionists refuse to do). So I copied it onto "Paint" and superimposed the "white" in the shadow on the "black" in the light. Sure enough they are nearly identical shades of gray. Which means that the "unnamed, unembodied intelligent designer" changed the colors while I moved them. ;-)

There's a quite spectacular B&W optical illusion that also relies on pliable neural processing.

Frank J said: I did not disbelieve you, but would have done the same thing even if I did, which is to test it for myself

I’m making some progress in my attempts to model this glory phenomenon, but I have reached a point where I need some experimental data. Some of these data require a fine mist to be generated by a lawn sprinkler or other means. It’s winter here, so I can’t go out and do it yet.

So here are some tasks if anyone is interested.

1. Are the colors really cyan, magenta, and yellow; or is this an artifact of conversion to the color system used in electronic imaging? Matt’s picture doesn’t have enough other color references to be sure.

2. What is the distance from the observer to the plane of the glory?

3. Question 2 is related to the size of the observer’s head, airplane, or other obstruction blocking the sun. Is it linearly proportional?

4. When looking back from the plane of the glory to the observer, how much of the sun is obscured?

So here is a set of measurements that can be done. Set up a lawn sprinkler or other system that can generate a mist such that an observer can stand between the mist and the sun and cast his shadow on the mist.

Find the distance from which the glory is observed, check carefully if you are seeing the standard rainbow spectrum (ROYGBV), or are seeing the complementary spectrum of cyan, magenta and yellow. Note other color references and make notes of this in your records. If you take a picture, try to introduce some standard color references in the picture that can be seen at the same time as the glory.

Have someone measure the distance from the observer’s head to the plane of the glory. Then have that someone shut off the water and look back at you from the plane of the glory and note how much of the sun is obscured by the observer’s head. Is the sun a thin halo about the head, or is much more of the sun visible? Maybe it is completely obscured?

When you click on the picture Matt posted, it takes you to another picture of a glory. The colors in that picture also seem to be cyan, magenta and yellow. The blue sky seems to be a good enough reference to suggest the colors in the glory are complementary. A good way to tell would be if other colors outside the glory are identifiable as from the ROYGBV set. Then it is likely the glory does consist of complimentary colors.

We still have the issue of color perception and how that arises from the mix of wavelengths that end up diffracted to the various spatial positions along the spectrum observable in space.

1. Are the colors really cyan, magenta, and yellow; or is this an artifact of conversion to the color system used in electronic imaging?

A similar but perhaps unrelated phenomenon occurs when the shadow of the observer falls upon a very rough "surface" (e.g. a forest) where there will be more and more shadows as the line of sight diverges from the immediately subsolar point.

The effect is that the shadow of the observer (or perhaps of the aircraft carrying the observer) appears to be surrounded by a bright nimbus.

Looking at my venerable copy of M. Minnaert's "Light And Colour In The Open Air" I see some discussion of this, as well of the Spectre of the Brocken and the reflective phenomenon responsible for the effectiveness of paint containing glass beads, used for traffic signs and road stripes.

Matt Young said: The overall pattern consists of the overlapping diffraction patterns of each wavelength in the spectrum. Consider a blue wavelength and a red wavelength. The blue wavelength displays a zero of intensity somewhere inside the zero of the red wavelength. At that point, you will see the color that is the complement of blue. How close to the complement probably depends on the width of the first minimum and a host of other things. It is probably not truly the complement, because the intensities of the various wavelengths at the point of observation are not the same.

GvlGeologist, FCD said: Even more strongly, I wanted to see it myself, so I did the same thing, and tested it myself. Sometimes I think that creationists simply have no curiosity about the world itself, and would rather have someone tell them what's what. They'd rather read something in a book and (literally) take it as gospel without checking into it themselves, or even look into contradictory claims.

At the moment I am just playing around with aperture shapes, periodic apertures and convolutions of apertures with periodic grating structures to refresh my memory.

Matt Young said: To a first approximation, all you need to consider is a single slit. The far-field pattern is a sinc function (sin(x)/x, for the uninitiated). Assume temporally incoherent light and add the intensities of the sinc functions that correspond to each wavelength. You will probably find that the color near the blue minimum is approximately the complement of blue. It has nothing to do with the retroreflection you see in the glory. The colors of the rainbow, by the way, are due to refraction and are essentially the colors of a prism, so I assume that they are not the complements.

I had mentioned earlier about looking for explanations for the layperson.

Matt’s last comment to me was a confirmation of what I was already recovering from long lost memories and details. But it is more technical.

Basically the explanation for the complementary colors in any spectrum comes from a mixing of wavelengths.

In the case of a prism or diffraction grating, different wavelengths of light get sent in different directions. The mechanisms for doing this are different in these two examples, but in the ideal case, each wavelength gets sent off to a unique angle. When they strike a screen or enter an eye, we see the rainbow colors of ROYGBV with each wavelength occupying its own “slot” in the spectrum.

It turns out that the eye responds not only to single wavelengths in the way we see the rainbow colors, but it also responds to mixtures of wavelengths. In the RBG to CMY description, equal amounts of G + B = C which is the compliment of R. Similarly R + B = M which is the compliment of G. R + G = Y which is the compliment of B.

R, G, and B can also be mixed in various proportions to produce just about any color you like. You can play with this using Paint. Click on Colors, Edit Colors, and Define Custom Colors to get at a panel you can experiment with to get the idea.

Now, in these cases of rainbow spectra and complement spectra, various physical mechanisms in the optical path of the white light can conspire to send one or more wavelengths into the same angle. What is more, these can be sent in various proportions. That mixture of wavelengths at a given angle is what the eye sees as a complementary color or grey or something else.

There different but equivalent ways of describing these complementary spectra. Either they can be described as mixtures of colors (wavelengths), or they can be described as subtractions of various amounts of RGB from white light. If you Google “complimentary colors”, you can find a number of different “color systems” used in the “color industry.”

Way, way back when I was doing Fourier optics and holography, computers were those big clunky things that occupied large rooms and you walked up to a window with a deck of punched cards to get anything done. Some of the older folks here will remember the bureaucratic politics and inner sanctums of computer priests who controlled access to those domains. There was no such thing as computer graphics. And it cost you money every time you intruded into the domains of these priesthoods.

So we didn’t get to explore all the simple little demos we can play with now using Maple, Mathematica, MathCad, or other software while sitting at our desk. Even graphing calculators now have more capability than we had access to back then. So, for me, this little trip down memory lane in a modern vehicle has been a lot of fun.

It's Newtons rings from the plastic inner pane of the window.

Matt McIrvin said: Shelldigger, how were the colors arranged? Was it a really big rainbow pattern with horizontal bands of color, taking the shape of the wispy cloud? That's a circumhorizontal arc; they are formed by light refracting in a certain way through ice crystals shaped like horizontally oriented hexagonal plates (if conditions are right, they'll orient themselves that way as they fall through the air). I've seen one once, and it was very pretty. Those wispy cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals, and the circumhorizontal arc is a large enough arc that the colors often cover the entire cloud. There was a widely circulated email a while back showing a picture of one and calling it a "fire rainbow", which is a misnomer.