What Is Electromagnetic Energy?

The emissions from the sun are called "electromagnetic energy" or "radiation." This radiation is frequently viewed as a stream of tiny particles. But, at the same time, it is also viewed as travelling in waves. Commenting on this apparently contradictory view, Professor Walter J. Moore said: "This unwillingness of light to fit neatly into a single picture frame has been one of the most perplexing problems of natural philosophy."
While all radiation, including light, travels from the sun at the same speed, it is not all the same. There are many kinds. Some kinds of radiation have very long wavelengths, being measured in miles. Others have very short wavelengths, measured in tiny fractions of millionths even thousand-millionths of an inch.
Radiations that have longer wavelengths include heat waves and the very long radio waves. And among the shorter radiations coming from the sun are ultraviolet rays, X rays, gamma rays and the very short cosmic rays. But none of these are visible to human eyes, and so they are sometimes called invisible light. However, in between the longer heat waves and shorter ultraviolet waves is a very narrow band of wavelengths that are visible. So the part that we see is only a very narrow band in the middle of a broad spectrum of wavelengths, from cosmic rays to radio waves and electrical currents.