Don’t validate that kind of idiocy with an argument, just say “sure, you’re probably right.” and brush off the idea of even talking about it in general.
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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The sun is white, but the atmosphere reflects and scatters blue, allowing red and yellow to pass through. You see this effect in mornings and evenings when the sun's light passes a much further distance in the atmosphere due to its low inclination. Your logic is sound, the clouds do appear orange at that time.
The only time you can safely look at the sun enough to determine its color normally is a sunset when it is tinted orange. I can see how he might have come to this conclusion but.... wow...
I remember the sun being orange, but also I remember not being able to look straight at it and having it depicted on TV and pictures as orange so thats probably where that impression came from.
Maybe also sunglasses have changed over the years? Maybe our eyes change as we grow and we actually could see it as orange back then? Streetlights used to be orange but are white now, maybe that mixes in the memory?
Theres lots of explanations for the misunderstanding and none of them involve God changing the light bulb.
This is an old Mandela effect.
The issue is that they don't actually remember what the sun looked like, because you can't really look at the sun.
Their memories are of the crayon drawings that they made in school.
This person is either at least mildly psychotic or fucking with you. It's wild that people are down here in the comments offering evidence when the entire concept is entirely absurd. This isn't an age or intelligence or experience thing this is a "this person is unhinged, don't interact" situation.
Science went from researching medicine and technology, to desperately trying to disprove all the shit dumb people posted on Facebook, like that the earth is flat etc.
The sun is orange, when it's dim enough to look at in the evening.
That's because the atmosphere takes all the blue away
Your friend is mentally ill or an idiot, likely both.
That's not a friend. Friendship is between approximate equals and requires respect and trust. He does not trust or respect you. He looks down on you for your age and ignores your valid arguments because of it. If you have any choice in the matter, get away from this person and find people who, even if they disagree, will do so from a place of reason and respect. Do not be fooled into thinking someone is a 'friend' just because you interact with them regularly.
That person has probably been using ChatGPT. Either that or this post is itself LLM-generated. One or the other.
Your friend is a fucking idiot.
Your friend has fallen down a far-right conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Sorry for your loss.
not even necessarily far-right, i jnow plenty of leftists/liberals that are dumb as fuck and believe in horoscopes and other stupid shit like that
Down votes are funny here. You are 100% correct, Idiots exist on all polical compass points.
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While the conclusion of it being replaced with an LED is obviously not what happened, I think it's very possible that the sun was often orange for him when he was growing up, because of air pollution.
30 years ago, depending on where you lived, there were more cars on the road with less efficient fuel consumption, more people using fireplaces, more people burning trash, less regulation of various industries etc. Searching for images with the phrase "smoke pollution sun" will give you a lot of photos of orange suns, and they're definitely not all altered for effect. I've seen red suns in real life too when wildfires are really bad near my area even though that's thankfully rare.
We know not the sun itself that is orange, but in a polluted environment it certainly looks like it is - and if you don't get a great education, I can see how you might think that's the actual color of the sun.
I've never considered the colour of the sun. I'm going to get my telescope out and have a look later today!
Careful of your eyes! I'm pretty sure you need a special filter or telescope for the sun
Nah it'll be fine Ill just have a quick peek!
30+ years ago skies used to be silver in cities from smog. Going across the mountains into Los Angeles could be like going to a different planet.
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LEDs don't generate the necessary level of heat...
But the sun is hot. You can feel the heat radiating from it.
LEDs are not hot - that's pretty much the main reason that they're energy efficient, they don't waste energy as heat.
It's not suddenly gotten colder, so if they did switch to LEDs, then they're also artificially compensating for the heat. Which would completely defeat the purpose of switching (presumably from an incandescent bulb) to LEDs.
Also, I'm super intrigued about who is supposedly behind this sun-bulb maintenance, and more interestingly, what could possibly be powering it
LEDs are not hot
Someones never accidentally touched an LED array.
I can guarantee you an LED array as big as the sun would generate enormous amounts of heat.and would need massive amounts of cooling.
Power density of the Sun is approximately 276.5 W/m³. That's counterintuitively little. A classic LED 3mm plastic package has the volume of less than 40 mm³ and some white ones can handle about 100 mW without a heatsink. Even leaving space for connections and airflow, you can easily overpower the Sun by volume by orders of magnitude.
A fun article mentioning that 276.5 W/m³ is about a reptile's metabolism (and they famously produce little body heat): https://what-if.xkcd.com/148/
On replacing the Sun with another light source: https://what-if.xkcd.com/151/
Basically, as this Stack Exchange discussion correctly states, human intuition is quite useless when thinking about things orders of magnitude outside our experience.
Meanwhile, you say "hot" because that's what your finger felt. Not really convincing of your ability to think in cosmic proportions.
LED chips can't get above 150 °C or they fail. So high-power LED lights need appropriate cooling. And the heatsink is big and thermally conductive, making it feel hotter to the touch than it is (it delivers more heat to you finger over time). Meanwhile, the glass of some bulbs can exceed 300 °C but cools down to safe levels in a minute (or less if you touch it with something) because it's thin.
Also, 150 °C (420 K) objects do radiate heat as black-body radiation but not that much, also it's far-IR so only detectable with thermal cameras. Meanwhile, a light bulb's filament is 2700 K (3000 K in halogen ones) and the Sun's surface is 6000 K, and both produce copious amounts of near-IR light that largely contributes to the heat felt on one's skin when illuminated.
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That's fair - my experience with handling them basically stops at individual LEDs in electronics and domestic LED lightbulbs.
Have you touched strong incandescent lights?
Sure LED arrays are hot, but cooler than old lights
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I'm going to take a different stance to a lot of the posters here.
Your friend may be showing signs of undiagnosed mental illness.
If you value him, listen to him and confront him when he has broken away from reality. But don't argue with him. Be firm in your disagreements but don't argue.
Be supportive of him if you can. Make sure he has a support network (parents siblings others)
Sometimes mental illness does not manifest until early adulthood.
Know your limits. Care for yourself.
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Did they look at the sun during a fire event?
Or maybe location dependent - we have significantly reduced air pollution in most places. I can easily imagine places with chronic haze that are no longer so
Yes. If the sun was orange, the light would be orange, and everything white would be orange.
The fact that your friend believes the sun was replaced by a giant LED is a sign they should not be your friend anymore
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A simple google will tell anyone the following
The Sun is white. It appears yellow from Earth because of scattering from the atmosphere. Its peak visible light is in the green part of the spectrum.
He could be a liar, I dunno, but he is definitely a doodoo head
https://sciencenotes.org/what-color-is-the-sun-hint-not-yellow/
We perceive the sun as white. That's a fairly important distinction.
The reason we perceive the sun as white is surely because the sun has output basically the same spectrum as long as humanity (and a great deal of humanity's precursors) has existed. We evolved with our eyes considering the spectrum the sun kicks out as fully white light, comprised of the sum total of electromagnetic frequencies we're able to receive with our eyeballs.
There is no such thing as objective color of any light. Our understanding of color is completely based on our perception of it. If the sun's peak output were in the 590–625nm range (what we currently perceive as orange) for all that time rather than in the green part of the spectrum it is in reality (500–565nm), we undoubtedly would have evolved to see that particular spectrum combination as white light instead.
All of the above notwithstanding, if the spectrum output of the sun changed overnight like OP's idiot friend is suggesting, it would be immediately apparent to everyone who isn't literally blind.
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Typical. You react with a realistic response to his nonsense, so he attacks your character and your intelligence. You must be stupid for not buying into his super dumb idea.
I'll bet he's a flat-earther, too, and you're an idiot for not being able to understand how obvious it is.
because I'm younger than him and vaccinated.
Bruh your friend is a conspiracy theorist. There's no arguing with him because he already thinks Bill Gates created the Corona virus to exterminate humans so the underground lizard men can retake the surface (actual quote from a conspiracy theorist I used to know, and claimed the same kinda batshit bullshit your friend is saying).
Honestly? Your best bet is to just not engage with them when topics like that come up. Incredibly difficult (sometimes impossible) to get them to realize the fairy tales they've convinced themselves are real, aren't actually.
If it gets too much to handle, probably best to cut ties.
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