Quote:

Why is the sky blue? Did my hamster really go to heaven?


WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?
The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

As you look closer to the horizon, the sky appears much paler in color. To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Some of it gets scattered away again in other directions. Less blue light reaches your eyes. The color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or white.


The circle of life and death
We collected some garden tools and decided on the best spot for the burial to take place. It was as we were digging, thankfully in frost-free soil, that he asked me completely out of the blue, and without any awkwardness, “Do animals go to heaven?” We carried on with the task in hand as our conversation took many twists and turns. After we had buried Fudge we placed a piece of wood where there would have been a headstone had it been a human being, and then had a hot drink (he made it for me). I don’t know how it came up, but we started talking about the food chain of plants and animals. I asked whether the chain might be better considered as a circle, since every species depended in some way on all the others.

So we were not far off his original question. Now it so happens that I have been thinking quite a lot recently about the theology of creation and eschatology, and had been surprised how much reference there is in the Judaeo-Christian scriptures to the whole earth and all the things that live on it. (Traditional interpretations have tended to be rather anthropocentric.) I said that it was inconceivable to me that there could be anything that I could think of as heaven (we readily agreed that no one knew what heaven would be like), without animals, birds, bugs and the rest. It would be incomplete. And I couldn’t imagine heaven as incomplete or partial. In fact, if animals were missing there would be a sense of loss and separation. It would be as if life on earth had not been taken seriously enough. You can see that his question had really got me thinking!

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