Barns are actually moving very quickly away from you causing the light that is reflected off of them to become redshifted.
Wait really red pigment is mainly rust? I’d imagine that would turn a orangish brown. Or brownish orange.
Well, ackshually…
The iron is produced by the star while “alive”. The nova only throws it into the void.
Farmers originally used to seal their barns with a combination of linseed oil (red-ish) and iron oxide (rust, red). Then when paint came around, apparently red paint was the cheapest. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/solved-why-are-barns-painted-red/
Yeah red dye goes a long way and is easy to make
Except car pigments? I hear that they are the most expensive.
House paint can use slag from mines, making it a rest product and thus very cheap.
Cars use much fancier stuff.
I find that a bit hard to believe, seeing as the paint of a car affects mpg through air resistance, luxury cars often add in glitter, and all of it has to be applied through air brushing
Maybe at one point, but I’d be beyond shocked if red was meaningfully more expensive. There are also the myths that red cars cost more to insure and get pulled over more, like with those myths there might be a tiny kernel of truth, but the statements probably aren’t true outside very specific historical conditions
That’s because of our evolutionary desire to look for ripe fruit. So, we want red thing.
Source: idk, heard it sopmewhere
Cool! I suspected there had to be a practical reason. Thanks for sharing the link!
Basically also why Swedish barns are red. I presume those two stories and red barn origins are related.
Not just barns, the stereotypical swedish red houses with white detailing exist pretty much because of a single copper mine in the town Falun, where they got so much leftover product to turn into paint that it basically supplied the entire country even to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red
That town also spawned the equally stereotypical (though less internationally known) Falu sausage, which is probably one of the most popular meat products here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falukorv
And lastly to hammer home how insanely important this mine has been: It has been continously mined from like year 800 up until the 90’s, has been the source of a lot of improvements to global mining technology, and as of 2001 it is a UNESCO world heritage site.
It’s honestly kind of weird it’s not more well known, and i HIGHLY recommend visiting the museum and going on a tour through the actual mine itself.You can get there by train comfortably by taking the Snälltåget night train from hamburg (or even berlin) to stockholm and then the SJ intercity to Falun.
Actual answer: back in the day the sealant that farmers coated barns with often had iron oxide in it because it helps prevent rot and mold, and the iron oxide would turn the sealant mixture red. Now people just do it because it’s a tradition.
It also happens to be cheap. Other pigments are hard to manufacture. Rust is easy.
Even today red paint is sometimes cheaper, especially when ordered in bulk.
It makes the barn go faster
Fastest barn in the west
100 to 0 in under 10seconds.
Idk if this is true for the US but where I live in Scandinavia red is a common house colour because historically it was a cheap colour you could get from mixing red ochre and oil, so red barns aren’t uncommon. Then again the US midwest does have a lot of Scandinavian immigrants so it might’ve bled over culturally because there’s lot of farms up there?
That’s a pretty good hypothesis 🤔
Red is the traditional color of painted wooden structures pretty much everywhere, think of Chinese temples for example. Black tar is another common one. Cave paintings typically used red too.
Barns are red because supernovas produce significant amounts of iron.
https://futurism.com/how-red-barns-are-linked-to-dying-stars
Well when you put it that way, just about everything can be linked to dying stars 🤓
Thanks for sharing the link!
“We are made of star stuff” -Carl Sagan
“We are all made of stars” - Moby
“We are stardust” - Joni Mitchell
Baby I’m a Star - Prince
That is because red paint was inexpensive and abundant, than it became tradition.
Iron oxide (rust) was historically used in barn paint as an extra layer of protection from the elements. This turned the paint red over time. Red barns became the “traditional” look as a result.
Barns are red because of exploding stars - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/barns-are-painted-red-because-of-the-physics-of-dying-stars-58185724/
Holy shit. Just what I needed on my trip.
Great article. Similar to “NASA’s booster size is the result of the size of a horse’s ass”: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-feet-85-inches-space-shuttle-horses-ass-william-batch-batchelder
I love these types of articles. I feel like there should be a community for these, but I don’t know what it’d be called
This is the answer.
Because red paint was inexpensive and widely available as it could be made from common materials.
Man I love how nerdy lemmy is
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Blood is also red due to iron for the sane reasons rust is red. Rust isn’t very vibrant on metal for other reasons, I’d assume mostly because it’s mixed with something not clear.
I’m not sure if this is why, bit the color depends on how oxidized each atom of iron becomes, so if you have a mix of different oxidation levels, you would also have a mix of the colors
