The Blue Wrapping

     This is a story of a Mighty Father and his capricious children. A father not with limbs like terrestrial beings but with a ball shaped body. White hot glowing body at the centre of our Solar System. He is mighty and with mission. He cares deep for his children, like Thanos, a mission-a-holic daddy. He gives birth to enormous children at his core. The stillborn babies have a lot of energy contained in them as gamma rays. For over thousands of years, the belly of their father is their home and playground. It is playtime always. They have a lot of time to play. (Wish we had too!) They cherish and spend time with each other, giggling and smashing into each other, not worrying of the energy they lose during their mega-annum play. The lovable daddy treats all his children in the same manner so is his unique style of calling everyone by the same name - Photon.

     After spending hundred thousand years under his warmth and guardianship, he assigns a task to all his children who have been playing all while and who has started their play from his innermost belly to the surface of his belly. Now they are youths and has shredded their energy from  X-ray to Ultra-Violet. Some stay as X-rays. Few as Ultra-violet. Their playtime is over and they are free to travel anywhere. He sends out his young ones as messengers in all directions. They have a strength. They can travel with the speed of light.(Wait a second. They are the light!). In a second they can travel three lakh kilometers. (So if a young teen befriends a girl Photon and while he is snapping his finger she will be gone three lakh kilometers away. Gone! Gone far away. Can he catch her? Actually he can. Yes, with his eyes)

     The Photons are so excited like the school children are on the day of their picnic. Keeping in mind the task their daddy gave them, they start their journey. They do not have to cross huge mountains and valleys like on Earth. They have a stupendous void space before them to trek. Wherever they look it's just empty space. Oh! Lonely little ones. Not dropping their hope, they keep travelling. They come across few spherical balls, what we call as planets, during the voyage . After a struggle of eight minutes and twenty seconds they see a blue ball called Earth floating in the vast space. They are tired and has lost some energy on their travel. What's waiting for them on the blue ball?

    The blue ball has a great defence system. Locals of the blue ball call it - the Atmosphere. A defence system with that much potential is found only in that blue ball. That's the peculiarity of it. The soldiers of this defence system are not mighty like the big daddy - The Sun. The soldiers are so small and escape the vigilance of our naked eyes. They are ominous but invisible. There are trillions and trillions of them stationed around the blue ball. Locals have a name for them too.  It is "the Atoms". But here, they are all not alike- most of them are called Nitrogen. Some as Oxygen and few others by many names which I don't remember properly but they exist too.

    The defence system has five major units – The Exosphere, the outermost unit, then the Thermosphere, followed by the Mesosphere – the middle one, after it comes the Stratosphere and finally the lowermost unit – the Troposphere. The Exosphere, the defence unit which is above 1000 kilometres from the ground of blue ball and where the space station ISS orbit - it is cold and hot out there– an oxymoron situation. There’s no big struggle. So, the incoming Photons are free to enter the Thermosphere. The soldiers in the Thermosphere welcome the Photons in exchange of few Ultra-violet energies, which is the source of energy for these soldiers to get ionized. After the trade, they send them in to deal with the next unit. The soldiers are stationed in large numbers in the below three units. The Photons are scattered by these soldiers in all the directions. They are naturally white in colour – containing the seven colours inside them – Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. The colour Violet has more energy and can only travel few distance (low wavelength) if scattered and as we go from Violet to Red, the energy depletes but their travelling length (wavelength) increases. The soldiers aim at the Photons and scatter them in all the directions. The Blue colour which can travel only for a tiny range is scattered more in the nearby regions since they are easy to catch. All these scattered Photons reach the back of inside of  the eye – the Retina and hence the sky appears blue for the terrestrial beings at the middle of the day and hence the Sun – their daddy looks white in the midday. (Don’t look at it directly). 

    Those Photons scattered away by the soldiers resume their journey and go in straight lines unless disturbed. We may not know what will happen to them on their way but eventually they will lose their energy and die out , before that they have served their purpose throughout their way – giving light in the darkness. The messengers of light! 

To be continued...

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