Why The Sky Is Blue And Also A Thing That Happened To My Cousin One Summer Evening

I was reading this article about Rayleigh scattering and how shorter wavelengths of light are scattered more by atmospheric particles which makes the sky appear blue to our eyes but it is fascinating when you think about how much we take for granted looking up each day. This reminds me of that summer my cousin Marcus decided he wanted to build a telescope from scratch using scraps in his grandfather's garage and I went over there one night around 10 PM with a flashlight because he could not find the lens cap which had apparently fallen into a bucket of bolts three weeks prior and we ended up sitting on the concrete floor for about four hours just talking about whether or not aliens would actually want to visit Earth or if they would just broadcast an annoying commercial message at us like television advertisers.