What types of electromagnetic radiation are the most common? meaning as light waves and microwaves, etc...move through our atmosphere which occur the most?
by 
ptmiesen
ANSWERS: 3
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On Earth, visible light is the most common. And of that, Green wins. Nearly all electromagnetic radiation on Earth comes from the Sun. The Sun's spectrum is very like that of a black object heated to 5250 degrees C, a characteristic curve whose shape, with one peak, was a real puzzle until Einstein explained it and won the Nobel Prize for that. Here's a picture of the peak showing the peak at 525nm which is in the green part of the spectrum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_Spectrum.png
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The EM radiation most prevalent in our Solar System is that of the visible light range. This the main EM output of the Sun (in the centre it's high energy radiation that would be deadly but as it moves through the layers to the sources most gets reduced to the part of the spectrum we can see). This also explains why our eyes are built to see this part of the spectrum (it's the most prevalent). There would be little point in having X-Ray sight as the Sun gives off little in the way of X-Rays and you would be blind most of the time. The reason the output at the Surface is peaked where it is due to "Black Body" approximations. This is the assumption that a body is both a perfect absorber and emitter. Now the layers receive energy from the core of the Sun and also emit it as well. The part of the spectrum most emitted (where it peaks) depends on the heat of the layers (the heat level where they have stabilised at, where heat in = heat out). You can use this approximation to give you the heat of stars (and gases for that matter) far off as well as just our Sun by looking at their output.
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5-23-2017 What are you talking about? There is only one type of EM radiation, although we have dozens of names for it.
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