With current knowledge of the solar system, it is certain that the answer is no. But in the past people could not be so certain. They had no idea of how the sun produced light or why it moved through the sky. By worshiping the sun as a god, they guarded against it going out.
A candle is simply an oil lamp with solid oil.
The human eye has a single lens and screen of light-sensitive nerve endings. Many insects have “compound” eyes, which are divided into hundreds or thousands of compartments. Each compartment is an individual eye with its own lens. On their own, these eyes cannot see much detail, but the insect’s brain adds their signals together to build up an image.
A cut diamond acts like a collection of prisms. When light passes through the diamond, the colors are dispersed and then reflected back out. The angle of each facet, or side of the gem, is specially calculated to give the diamond its “fire.”
Why do things glow when they are very hot? The answer is that they emit visible electromagnetic waves — or light. Even a very cold object, such as a block of ice, emits wave, but the waves are weak, and they are much too long for human eyes to detect. As an object becomes warmer, its atoms emit much ore wave energy, and the waves it produces become shorter and shorter. If it is warmed enough, it will eventually start to glow. This happens because the waves it emits are now short enough for human eyes to see.
Sometimes atoms absorb light of one wavelength, but almost immediately release the energy as light of another wavelength. This is called fluorescence. Fluorescence happens when an electron takes in energy and moves to a higher orbit, but then falls back to a lower orbit in a series of steps. Many substances fluorescence when UV light strikes them. We cannot see UV, but we can see the lower-energy light that fluorescence produces.
Transparent materials are common in nature. Pure water, some natural oils, and the crystals of many minerals are transparent. But apart from a vacuum, nothing is ever completely see-through.
A normal light bulb works by “incandescence” — it glows because an electric current heats up its filament. In a fluorescent lamp the electric current flows through a gas that is under low pressure. The gas gives off UV light, and this strikes a phosphor coating, making it fluorescence and produce visible light. A vapor lamp contains a gas under low pressure, but the gas glows with visible light when electricity passes through it. The color of the light depends on the type of gas.
When someone speaks through a telephone, the voice is converted into a form of energy that can be sent from one place to another. Before fiber optics, the form of energy was always electricity.