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I had a random musing about 4 months ago, and talked about it on my website, The Tangled Web of Infinity (that's all the shameless self promotion I'm doing today, I promise). The idea has still been stirring in the back of my mind, so I thought I'd repost it here, and have people with more background in this type of thing discuss it. Feel freee to rip it apart if it needs to be- like I said, it's just a random idea I had. Here goes:
And now begins our examination on light, colour, and the possibilities that our senses are completely muted.
First and foremost: when you “see” an object, you are not seeing it at all. Your eyes are actually processing the light bouncing off an object and striking your pupil, as most of you probably already know. It’s slightly more complicated than that, as an object absorbs radiation at varying levels and reflects back the unabsorbed wavelengths, but that’s not overly important for my purposes at the moment.
Light is a nice way of saying electromagnetic radiation, with visible light being radiation with a certain wavelength. The range of light of light visible to the average human eye runs from a wavelength of 380 nanometers (alternatively a frequency interval of 790 terahertz) to 740 nanometers (405 terahertz). Purples are at the low end of the of the wavelengths and highest frequency, and reds are at the highest intensity wavelengths and shortest frequency. At higher wavelengths than we can see is infrared and higher, and lower wavelengths than we can see are ultraviolet and lower.
A handy dandy graphic to better explain:
Now, what you're saying is "What the hell? What are you babbling about?" Well, I'm getting there. Infrared is the first clue to it all. Although humans are incapable of seeing infrared due to our optic structure, we can perceive it. We do this not with out optic nerve, but with every neuron in our body. Infrared is perceived by our bodies as heat. All objects emit radiation to some degree, and heat is nothing more than radiation. Most objects at room temperature or above emit radiation at around mid-infrared level (infrared radiation gives off a wavelength roughly from 740 nanometers to 1 millimeter). So, even though we can't see the infrared light/radiation, we can perceive it.
Ultraviolet light, however, is not perceivable by humans at all. You can't feel UV light like you can IR light. However, UV radiation still has affects upon the human body. UV rays cause damage collagen fibers, contributing to skin aging and cancer. On the plus side, UV radiation is necessary for Vitamin D production in our bodies. Despite the fact that we fail to perceive UV light, it has profound affects on the body.
Now comes the interesting part. Different animals perceive light at different wavelengths. Bees, for a classic example, don’t see much higher wavelengths than yellowish orange; however, they see UV levels considerably lower than humans can. Bees can naturally see things that we simply can't process.
The reason all this stuff has been on my mind for a couple of weeks is because a friend of mine has been telling me about this ghost who's living in his new house. Ghost activity is generally associated with immediate-climate change. Things usually get very cold, around the area a ghost "appears". This would mean a change in thermal-radiation level, and thus possibly a change in light level. I'm curious if some so-called paranormal entities aren't simply organisms operating at a light level we are incapable of perceiving. Psychologists tell us that our brains are only capable of interpreting 3% of the outside stimuli our senses feel and see. That's a lot of missed information. It seems completely possible to me that a species might have evolved over the last 4 billion years that would be undetectable by most animals' senses. Who hear hasn't felt something touching our leg or something and looked down and seen that nothing was there? Was this sensation merely a neuron spasm sending us false information, or was it possibly something more?
I'm wondering at what intensity something has to be to have a nerve send an electrical signal to the brain. I should find that out. Is it possible that host or fairies or aliens or whatever are constantly present, but simply at a perception level we're incapable of perceiving? It seems as good a conjecture as any I've heard to explain some of these phenomenons. Perhaps time and advancements in science will explain everything.
And yes, I do lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about stuff like this for hours on end at night. Thanks for asking.
So yes. That's my original post. What holes are there in this? Is my knowledge of light inaccurate? Let me know. |
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