Some of the best sunset I saw were ones while I was in Montana and Yellowstone park was on fire (1996?).. really red sunsets...

Particulate mater of any kind contributes to sunsets... anything that causes increased diffraction...

My sister used to say of a red sunset, "Look at the beautiful cancer"

I recall driving into a couple of decades ago and seeing a bowl of gray over the city. The "weird layer of gunk that hovers in a brown band over the city" looks like an improvement.

By the way, you can see a similar but less distinct reddish haze looking toward downtown Houston from, for example, Clear Lake.

It's odd to think that something so dangerous and destructive could be so beautiful.

I understand the sunsets were really awesome after orbital nuclear testing long ago too. :(

Think we're getting the message?
I don't either, the Indian is still crying too.

@strider_mt2k:Think we're getting the message?

History shows again and again / how nature points out the folly of men
GODZILLA

Whoa whoa whoawhoawhoa!! Easy there, kids. Set the Kool-Aid down and, slowly, calmly, step back.

Ground-level ozone is a pollutant. Upper-atmosphere ozone is saving your ass on a daily basis.

@beercheck: Oh yeah. I forgot. Science fiction site. Never mind, everybody.

Someone explain how ozone is responsible for any of these sunset effects?

It's invisible, and (AFAIK) not overly refractive... My understanding is that the particulates have a vastly stronger effect on sunsets?

BTW, if you want to see real L.A. smog, look at a picture from the '50s. Or from a Chinese industrial city, today.

Also note - most polluted US cities...

-Kle.

@Klebert L. Hall: Seconded. Particulates, not ozone. Ozone just makes your tan that much more cancerous.

Here's a science fiction story premise for you to play with.

First assume space travel is cheap and easy.

Second assume space habitat engineering, terraforming and bioengineering have made it easy for us to build self-sufficient colonies elsewhere in this solar system.

Third assume that there are even plans to send colonizing voyages to nearby solar systems.

Problem: How do we convince people to willingly move off the Earth, and perhaps be engineered into a new species, to live in these new artificial environments?

Looking at human history there has been a long trend for humans to abandon the countryside and move into cities. Half the human population of Earth lives in cities now.

Can we set up a similar trend when space colonies are reliable and easy?

Can we one day empty the Earth of human presence and perhaps restore it to something like its pre-human state?

@corpore-metal: Easy if the scenario you set up is true... people will move to new area provided there incentive for them to go there (jobs, money, 'land') or there is disincentive for them staying where they are.. (pollution, persecution)

Look at the building of new world colonies, the move westward, and people moving to California during the great depression (and the gold rush)...

People don't move to the city because it is reliable and easy.. they think they can find jobs there..

@corpore-metal: And regarding the emptying of the earth..

It happens in Simearth.. so why not?

Man I want to play that game again...

@DocGratis:

Something just occurred to me. What about historical preservationists?

What if someone proposes moving the great ancient monuments off the Earth into a hollowed out asteroid?

OOoooooh, that's cool! Museum asteriods filled with all the ancient and historical wonders of human civilization. You'd have the Sumerian Asteriod, the Mayan Asteroid, the Indus Asteroid, etc. etc. All filled with SCA nerds and historical reinactors. They'd closed Mondays and free to the public on Thursdays!

I always used to think that the rainbow pattern that gasoline makes in water was cool-looking, too.

@Silver_Back:
You don't spend much time in the sea, do you?

That stuff is nice, but I prefer the sunsets made by good ol' (natural) dust in the air from back home. Semi-arid living has its perks.

@DocGratis:
Comment on The Sunset Splendor of Ozone Diffraction has nothing to do with how red a sunset is. Its actually wavelength dependent scattering. Rayleigh scattering in this case.

Yah, we have some pretty sunsets here in the greater NYC metro area, then we hack up our lungs all night...Romantic...

@strider_mt2k: hey, did you know that the guy that played the indian in all those "crying indian" commercials was really Italian? irony, huh...

It was also my impression that ozone was O3 and, as was said before, it is the particulate matter like carbon(soot from diesels), unburnt gasoline, oil etc that causes the visible light refraction and defraction.

Ozone acts as a filter in the UV range, as in "The Ozone Layer", and the lack of this is what causes skin cancer.

@BSAKat: Oh, I've done my part of fishing and boating when I was younger. I have a healthy respect for the big foreboding blue waters. :)

So...I should be HAPPY about the Ozone?
(I thought Frozone was funny, but hey he who Lucius last, Lucius Best...

I guess the Italian guy is still crying, wait! He wasn't really crying either, was he?

Damn :(

So was it ozone when I took this [www.thereheis.com] pic?

@Mathmos: I recall driving into a couple of decades ago and seeing a bowl of gray over the city.
you drive a time machine and all you want to talk about is airborne pollutants?

The danger with ozone is that with three oxygen molecules O3 will allow one oxygen molecule to split off and interact with other chemicals. This interaction can occur with the chemicals in your body just as readily and has been known to cause respiratory distress. That is why people state that high altitude ozone helps you (by shielding you from UV) but low altitude ozone is a polution and dangerous.

...and you dont want to use electric cars...

We have great sunsets here in Oregon east of the Cascade Mountains (in the desert) and NO pollution or ozone. The largest city is maybe 70,000 people and non-industrial. I think maybe it is the dust in the air, as the mountains are very crisp and clear in the morning, but hazy by the afternoon. Also, what is wrong with electric cars? We don't generate it with coal out here, just by killing free flowing rivers. And gas pumps use electricity anyway, as well as the computer you're typing on. Electricity is a LOT cleaner than gasoline! You can make it with solar, wind, wave, bike pedals, etc. activity and not with coal or nukes.

@corpore-metal: Yeah, but the bus fare's a bitch.

@corpore-metal:

"Can we one day empty the Earth of human presence and perhaps restore it to something like its pre-human state?"

The answer is almost certainly no.

Look up the rate at which population grows, and try to figure out how much lift it would take to move that many people. Even if you had a giant doorway that people could just walk through and teleport elsewhere, it's hard to move enough people quickly enough.

If you want to evacuate the Earth, first you need to kill almost everyone, and then you need to make the survivors stop having kids.

Maybe an immortality treatment that kills half the people that recieve it, and sterilizes most of the survivors...

-Kle.

P.S. - folks, ozone's dangerous, but only in relatively high concentrations. It's not like nerve gas; your electric drill and mixer make it, for example.

@Klebert L. Hall: We might easily empty the earth of humans, but the earth's state after us would be vastly different from what preceded us.

We could always rig up a vaguely phallic atmospheric converter and torch the sky if it gets too persnickety...

Many threads here. The photos and editorial are thought provoking, but disconnected. As has been stated, it's the particulates, not the O3 that makes the wonderful colors. Remember also that water vapor is a particulate. I grew up in LA ( mid 20th century) and remember how bad it was before cars had emission controls. Then it got clearer. Then it slowly worsened. Yeah, the cars were cleaner but there were more and more and more. Two steps forward, one step back.
The other thing that bears on LA is its unique geography. Even in the pueblo days, the basin had air pollution problems (it was called the plain of little smokes). The proximity of the ocean and the funnel arrangement of the encircling mountains, coupled with thermal inversion, conspire to trap particulates in the lower atmosphere. As the winds form the Pacific come up in the afternoon the basin clears from the western side. Good for Los Angeles, bad for San Bernadino.

Could never be a pirate, as I seem to have trouble with my arrr's.

@Mathmos:

It isn't ever the same... Never was, never will be.
-Kle.

@strider_mt2k: So true. Nice one with the Indian crying! That's old school nostalgia right there.