9-Hour Rainbow In Taiwan Could Break Guinness World Record

Mother Nature may have broken a world record last week when a rainbow appeared over the Chinese Culture University in Taipei and stayed for nearly nine hours, the BBC reported. Two professors worked with students to document the rainbow throughout the day so that they could submit it to Guinness World Records.

The previous record for the longest-lasting rainbow, recorded in Yorkshire, England, in March 1994, lasted just two thirds as long as the one in Taiwan. So if Guinness accepts the recordings and proof from professors Chou Kun-hsuan, and Liu Ching-huang, the recent rainbow would become the official record holder. Those at the university originally didn’t expect the rainbow to last long, as most rainbows don’t, but after four hours the professors started asking students and others at the school to start documenting it, Professor Chou told BBC.

Everyone at the university was ready to document the rainbow because there had been a six-hour-long one a few days earlier, according to BBC. Now everyone is working to collect the information necessary to apply for the new world record.

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the university alone took more than 10,000 photos of the rainbow to prove that it lasted almost nine hours. Professor Chou said he and his students and colleagues are prepared to prove every second of the rainbow to Guinness.

Rainbows are simply optical phenomenons that only appear when the conditions in the atmosphere are perfect and the angle of the viewers is perfect, as well, according to NASA. The colors that appear to radiate from the sky are formed from water droplets that are floating in the air, which is why rainbows so frequently appear after rain and when the sun begins to peak out again. The water in the air bends the sunlight and when the light exits the droplet it breaks into each of its wavelengths of visible light.

These conditions happened perfectly at the university, where it is currently winter but the moisture is trapped in the air where it can form clouds long enough for the sun to make it out and into the water vapor.