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Dude96
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What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum?
#9213133 - 11/09/08 05:29 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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How would it appear? Imagine if you could see both infared and ultra-violet rays. Can some animals? How would their vision be in comparison to ours?
To think in an incredibly abstract fashion, for those who believe in ghosts and such..do you think sightings potentially would become more common through different light waves?
Hell, if you could see radiowaves how would things look.
Kind of a random thought, take it however you will and add if you like, i just felt compelled to throw it out there.
-------------------- "We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that our eyes once watered." -Tom Stoppard "He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." -Samuel Johnson I will be a cancer upon you, ravaging all that you love and sundering your beliefs. Then, and only then, once you have fallen so far and are but a shell of that which you once were, I will grant you your every dream. Only to crush them all before your eyes. You doubted my willpower, you abused my generosity, and now you will recognize my cruelty. -Anonymous
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Icelander
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Dude96]
#9213165 - 11/09/08 05:36 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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How would it appear?
I'm not ready to share this information.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Jax
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Icelander]
#9213636 - 11/09/08 06:52 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Even if I'd seen what it looks like I wouldn't be able to tell you. I mean, how do you describe what red looks like to someone who's been blind their whole life?
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deCypher
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Dude96]
#9213836 - 11/09/08 07:21 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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And just imagine that there's probably more than the electromagnetic spectrum out there in terms of forces or fields that we have absolutely no conception of currently.
Makes me wish I'll still be alive in a few hundred years.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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btm1111
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: deCypher]
#9213842 - 11/09/08 07:22 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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how do you describe what red looks like even to someone who has "seen" it?
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Jax
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: btm1111]
#9213891 - 11/09/08 07:33 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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You don't. At best you try to use other things as a reference. The fact that we cannot reduce the inner qualitative aspects of our mental states into physical terms is one of the main reasons why there is no complete philosophy of mind.
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DieCommie
Registered: 12/11/03
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Dude96]
#9214239 - 11/09/08 08:20 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Some snakes and other reptiles can see in the infrared. Many things that are opaque to 'visible' light are transparent to infrared. It would be crazy to see through walls and the like. Maybe, instead of needing a special substance to be transparent (glass), we would need a special substance to be opaque.
Bees and other insects can see in the ultraviolet. If you look at some flower in the ultraviolet they have patters and detail we cant see. We can only glimpse part of the beauty the flowers use to attract bees.
I think its very likely future humans can have implants to widen the spectrum we can see. Now that would probably just be false color, where infrared looks 'red' and so on. But if you developed your senses with this ability from birth or before, perhaps different unknown shades would emerge out of the brains new found sensory input. Its sensory input that molds our consciousness and perceptions to begin with, so changing the scope of that input would have a profound effect this way we perceive the world.
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Sleepwalker
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: DieCommie]
#9214252 - 11/09/08 08:23 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
DieCommie said: But if you developed your senses with this ability from birth or before, perhaps different unknown shades would emerge out of the brains new found sensory input. Its sensory input that molds our consciousness and perceptions to begin with, so changing the scope of that input would have a profound effect on one fo the ways we perceive the world.
I don't see why not. The colors we know and love are complete fabrications in the first place.
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DieCommie
Registered: 12/11/03
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Sleepwalker]
#9214295 - 11/09/08 08:30 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Well a fabrication implies deceit right? I think of them more as abstractions. Regardless of whats its called, I guess it would depend on how we conceptualize the spectrum from visual signals we get; either hard wired or developed. Probably a bit of both. If so there may be a limited ability for humans to develop new abstractions from the spectrum. (unless we do some genetic engineering )
An interesting corollary I think... In some languages blue and green are different shades of the same color. People who speak these languages nativity take on average a longer amount of time to distinguish between them. So there is direct evidence of how language and visual perception are directly linked.
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: DieCommie]
#9214312 - 11/09/08 08:33 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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You're right, abstraction is a much better word. It becomes self-deception when a person starts believing that their perceptions are hard reality, IMO.
I want to say that I've seen new colors while tripping, but of course once I'm back to baseline it's impossible to remember them, so I don't know for sure.
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zouden
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Dude96]
#9216440 - 11/10/08 05:28 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Dude96 said: How would it appear? Imagine if you could see both infared and ultra-violet rays. Can some animals? How would their vision be in comparison to ours?
To think in an incredibly abstract fashion, for those who believe in ghosts and such..do you think sightings potentially would become more common through different light waves?
Hell, if you could see radiowaves how would things look.
Kind of a random thought, take it however you will and add if you like, i just felt compelled to throw it out there.
I can give you a bit of an idea. Radiowaves have very large wavelengths; this means they can penetrate objects much better than visible light. So you would be able to see through buildings! But because you cannot resolve anything smaller than the wavelength, everything would be blurry as fuck. You wouldn't be able to see details smaller than hundreds of meters across.
Microwaves are still bigger than visible light, so you can't resolve details smaller than a centimetre or so. But you can still see through most objects.
Infrared is pretty cool. You can put infrared film in a camera. The sky looks dark! I think leaves are quite light as they try and reflect as much infrared as possible. Same with grass. It's all topsy turvy.
On the other side of visible light you have UV. It would look very similar to visible light, but the colours are different, flowers look AWESOME, spider webs are shimmering rainbows, and glass is opaque. In fact, most things are opaque.
X-rays etc: You'd be practically blind. There are very few X-ray sources on the planet; X-rays from the sun don't reach us because they get stopped by the atmosphere. So everything would be dark, apart from certain rooms in hospitals. If you were in space, the sky would look quite different, because there are stars that emit x-rays but no visible light, so we can't see them. Same with gamma rays.
Also: you can never see through metal, because conductors stop all electromagnetic waves.
Hope that sheds some light on the problem!
-------------------- I know... that just the smallest part of the world belongs to me You know... I'm not a blind man but truth is the hardest thing to see
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fireworks_god
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: zouden]
#9217188 - 11/10/08 09:56 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
zouden said: On the other side of visible light you have UV. It would look very similar to visible light, but the colours are different, flowers look AWESOME, spider webs are shimmering rainbows, and glass is opaque. In fact, most things are opaque.
I wonder how the huge buds on a flowering pot plant would look, considering how the surface of the trichomes act as a lens to magnify light, allowing UV-B through, and then, inside, THC is produced to absorb the UV-B... It must look amazing. It is my understanding that THC is one of the few examples of anything really seeking to harness the energy of UV-B instead of simply blocking it, which is why you would say most things are opaque...
-------------------- If I should die this very moment I wouldn't fear For I've never known completeness Like being here Wrapped in the warmth of you Loving every breath of you
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deimya
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: zouden]
#9217510 - 11/10/08 11:10 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Also: you can never see through metal, because conductors stop all electromagnetic waves.
Actually metals reflect EM waves below their plasma frequency and transmit above, so you would surely see them in the right spectrum. This fact is responsible for the different colours of metals, like copper and silver. Gold's yellow is not so straightforward but that's unimportant. Most metals have their plasma frequency in the UV range and thus appear shiny grey since they reflect mostly all the visible spectrum equally. Any static field is blocked though, since it basically correspond to a zero frequency wave component and such frequency is always under the plasma frequency (obviously).
/nitpick
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zouden
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: deimya]
#9218348 - 11/10/08 02:18 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Oh wow, that's cool. But it's still true that you can't see through metals because they're a Faraday cage right?
-------------------- I know... that just the smallest part of the world belongs to me You know... I'm not a blind man but truth is the hardest thing to see
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deimya
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: zouden]
#9218838 - 11/10/08 03:48 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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You can't see through metals if you look at them with a frequency lower than their characteristic plasma frequency. You will partially of completely see through them if you look with higher frequencies. Hence Faraday cages are effective only below their characteristic plasma frequency.
Metals owe their electromagnetic properties to the electron gas at their surface, and electron gases react very differently to static (like constant fields) and dynamic cases (like oscillating fields such as electromagnetic waves). As for electron gases, they in turn owe their properties to Fermi-Dirac statistics and to the underlying crystalline lattice structure of their metallic atoms.
Since common natural and artificial electromagnetic noise is mainly composed of radio frequencies and microwaves frequencies, it is thus true that Faraday cages will offer a virtually perfect shield against them. Above UV frequencies, though, metals become transparent because the electron gas is not able to react quickly enough to the external electromagnetic excitation and thus shielding induction processes can't take place effectively. But such cases are not commonly encountered in communications and electronics.
Sorry to sound so dry, and that ain't no P&S either
Edited by deimya (11/10/08 03:56 PM)
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DieCommie
Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: deimya]
#9218950 - 11/10/08 04:11 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
s for electron gases, they in turn owe their properties to Fermi-Dirac statistics
After the characteristic frequency or always?
hmmm, would a super conductor behave the same way? Since it doesnt allow magnetic fields.
Edited by Qubit (11/10/08 04:15 PM)
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BrainChemistry
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: Dude96]
#9218995 - 11/10/08 04:19 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Theoretically, if we lived in a different solar system, our eyes would have adjusted to see a different spectrum. Our sun emits the most light at the visible yellow wavelength (thats why it appears yellow, go figure!). But if our star was colder than it would emit more towards the infrared, and we most likely would have adapted to see in that spectrum!
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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deimya
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: DieCommie]
#9219107 - 11/10/08 04:37 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Fermi-Dirac statistics always hold as long as fermion obey Pauli's exclusion principle and one is in thermal equilibrium, which might not be the case if you excite strongly enough as to break local equilibrium, but I'm not sure about this.
As for superconductor, if the magnetic field is strong enough superconductivity disappears. I don't know yet about dynamical properties of superconductors.
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DieCommie
Registered: 12/11/03
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: deimya]
#9219198 - 11/10/08 04:50 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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So is there anything that is opaque to all frequencies? Probably not.
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BrainChemistry
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Re: What if one could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? [Re: DieCommie]
#9219237 - 11/10/08 04:55 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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A black hole.
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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