What parts of the electromagnet spectrum are blocked out by the earth's atmosphere?
Answers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/image:atmos.
(Wikipedia image of Earth's atmospheric opacity)
Atmospheric opacity refers to how well the atmosphere blocks the rays. For example, glass does not block visible light, but a wood does, therefore the wood is opaque to visible light, but glass is not.
From the graph, you can tell the atmosphere blocks most rays except for a bit with wavelengths between 0.4 and 0.7 micrometers (which is visible light) and between 5cm and 15 meters, which is radiowaves.
gamma rays
gamma and, up until recently, UV to some degree as well.
cosmic rays, gamma rays
The radiation from the sun reaching the earth's surface is only 70% of the radiation energy from the sun reaching the atmosphere . Hence 30% is blocked by the atmosphere.The radiation spectrum that is called EM spectrum is a map of the radiation power ,which includes the visible part to the human eye ,basically indicates the different colors as a function of frequency.
So we have an energy loss but not a power loss in the spectrum.due to the atmosphere.
The higher frequency of Em spectrum would be blocked not by the atmosphere but by the Van Allen Belt which is a region where the Earth's magnetic field is prevalent . The Magnetic field deflects the Harmfull to humans radiation In the form of beta and gamma.
Most short waves like gamma, x-ray and a fair amount of UV get blocks optical get through and some IR but water vapour tends to absorb IR and microwaves. Once into radio wavelengths the atmosphere is transparent.
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