GaryN's post is a combination of extraordinary claims, stated as facts but without any rational support, and assertions which are blatantly wrong.
GaryN wrote: ↑Sat Oct 24, 2020 7:26 pm
On Earth the conversion from non-visible to visible light is due to the atmosphere, as it is on the Moon, except that it is the silica dust in the lunar daytime atmosphere that is producing the visible light. This is an accepted scientific process.
By considering geometric optics it is obvious that on a clear day the light rays from the sun travel directly from a point on the Sun's surface to Earth's surface. That this must be so, is made clear by the fact that features on the Sun's surface can be observed from the Earth. So what is this "accepted scientific process" that down-converts the frequency of "non-visible" light (ultra-violet, X-ray?) to visible light, with a close to black body spectrum of 5800K complete with the Fraunhofer lines of atomic absorption in the Sun, and with the outgoing photons continuing on the same path as the incoming photons? This process must by inelastic (by definition since it reduces the frequency of the photons) so what happens to the lost energy? Indeed what is the solar mechanism by which the Sun produces only UV and X-ray energy? What about the detailed spectra of all the stars and galaxies that we can measure? Are they also preserved through the same "accepted scientific process".
From Earth we can measure the strength of the beam illumination with the pyrheliometer, but if that was tried on the Moon it would be found that there is very little heat from the Sun, a fact that will be verified if any of the proposed lunar mining operations attempts to use solar concentrators to smelt the ore.
A pyrheliometer measures the total area energy density of illumination coming directly from the Sun, in a band from 200nm to 10,000nm (from the mid-UV-C to the mid-IR, including the visible). It does not measure just infra-red radiation. All absorbed frequencies contribute to heating a target. In fact the shorter wavelength UV consists of photons with a higher energy per photon than visible and IR, and so each UV photon will contribute more energy (and heating) to a target.
The light on the Moon is due to fluorescence, a cold light.
This is not even wrong. What is a cold light (in scientific raather than artistic terms)? All absorbed electromagnetic radiation of whatever frequency contributes to heating a target. If by a cold light, you mean light that does not contain an IR component then this also wrong as fluorescence can occur across the electromagnetic spectrum, including in the IR.
The process is much more complex on Earth, but again without experiments I am certainly not going to try and figure out what is no doubt a very complex multi stage process of absorption and emission by assorted molecules in the atmosphere.
The experiments have largely been done, and you just need to take account of the results.
The heat from the Sun is from IR emissions of CO2 in the lower atmosphere, there is none in the lunar atmosphere.
Apart from the fact that there isn't the slightest shred of evidence to support this assertion, it is wrong in other ways. All solar wavelengths contribute to the heating of an absorbing surface, the heating is not confined to the IR.
No doubt there is scattering in the lower atmosphere to some degree, but the blue sky is I'd wager is not from scattering but airglow, mainly the 486 nm Balmer line,
This is wrong. First of all, hydrogen makes up about half a part per million of the atmosphere, and that tiny trace amount is almost all molecular hydrogen. There simply isn't any atomic hydrogen in the atmosphere to produce the Hβ line. But even more damning is the fact that the spectrum of the blue sky is not a single line but is exactly what you would expect if the standard explanation is correct - the near BB spectrum of the Sun multiplied by the Rayleigh scattering curve for the molecular species present in the atmosphere.
though wikipedia says the blue sky is mainly 485 nm.
Does it really? Where does it say that?
Experiments are the way to go, I have no fear of the results. Maybe not exactly what Ipredict, but certainly far from what mainstream tells us.
Enough experiments have been done to show that this hypothesis is a non-starter.
Perhaps you should also look at the results from SOHO specifically designed to study the Sun, and located at the Sun-Earth L1 point 1.5 million km from Earth, and ACRIMSAT which measured the Spectral Solar Irradiance at 700km orbit.
