For example, we can feel infra - red radiation from a fire as heat and, while we can't sense
ultra-violet radiation from the sun directly, it can nonetheless give us sunburn.
One suggestion he came up with was that the energy coming in
from the
sun in the form of visible and
ultra-violet light (known back then as «luminous heat») was easily able to pass through Earth's atmosphere and heat up the planet's surface, but that the «non-luminous heat» (now known as infra - red
radiation) then emitted by the Earth's surface could not make it back in the opposite direction quite so readily.