On September 9, many United States west coast residents looked out their windows and witnessed a post-apocalyptic landscape: silhouetted cars, buildings and people bathed in an overpowering orange light that looked like a jacked-up sunset.
The scientific explanation for what people were seeing was pretty straightforward. On a clear day, the sky owes its blue colour to smaller atmospheric particles scattering the relatively short wavelengths of blue light waves from the sun. An atmosphere filled with larger particles, like woodsmoke, scatters even more of the colour spectrum, but not as uniformly, leaving orangish-red colours for the eye to see.
But most city dwellers were not seeing the science. Instead, the burnt orange world they were witnessing was eerily reminiscent of scenes from sci-fi films like Blade Runner: 2049 and Dune.
The uncanny images evoked sci-fi movies for a…