How do radio waves travel to the opposite side of the planet? How do they overcome the curvature of the earth?

Question

Does the signal simply pass through multiple radio towers?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Think of radio towers like big lightbulbs changing their color(FM radio) or brightness(AM radio) to send a message, you can see the light from around corners (curves of the earth) from the bulb lighting up the wall and the wall glowing like the lightbulb (atmospheric reflection). Things like the color of the wall (gasses in the air), how bright the room is (time of day), or things on the wall can mess things up(clouds and such), so you can really only use this for brightness and not color(Because the color can be changed and not all colors bounce off the same things). But this doesn’t make the light brighter so it will only be seeable for as far as you can see the light normally.

Or you can play a game of telephone by having one lightbulb copy another lightbulb’s message. But this can cause the message to be delayed as each light in the chain needs to repeat what they see.