What if humans could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum?

[sniffer]

what if our eyes can see all range of em waves, from radio waves to gamma rays?

will life look more beautiful because we see more colours?

i cannot imagine myself looking at colours i never saw.

 

[arildno]

Whatever has colour to do with beauty??
A black&white photograph can be highly satisfactory from an aesthetic point of view.

 

[dduardo]

I wish I had selective x-ray vision.

 

[cronxeh]

I'm pretty sure you are wishing about near infrared receptivity with exposure control, huh dduardo

 

[kaos]

i think if u can see more "colors" (like a squid or something,) u would not see new "colors" but u get a better color gradient, like 32 bit or 16 bit color or watever color.

 

[cronxeh]

I don't think that's how it works. The colors we 'see' or are able to perceive are simply of certain frequency, its how our brain or retina interprets them and converts them into 'green' or 'red' or a mix is what's so fascinating. I honestly can't imagine how a 'new' color would look like.. its an eery feeling of not being creative enough and feeling that ceiling bumping against your head as you try to think

 

[matthyaouw]

I wonder if you'd go blind from IR radiation by looking at a hotplate...

 

[cronxeh]

if you encounter a physiological damage in a form of a burn to the soft tissue and nerve ending, then yeah.. otherwise you don't get eye damage from a 'flood' of information, especially since there is nothing on your retina to actually interpret NIR frequencies

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I found it interesting to read that the colour brown is really just what happens due to the way our eyes interpret red and green. Apearantly there really is no such colour as brown.

 

[Kerrie]

I found it interesting to read that the colour brown is really just what happens due to the way our eyes interpret red and green. Apearantly there really is no such colour as brown.

what about all of the brown eyed folks in the world then? (such as myself
) what color would my eyes really be then?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Lol... I'm not sure just how accurate what I said is but what I read seems to make sense. Ok I tried looking up the information that I had read before and what I found doesn't seem to match up with what I read. At any rate what I read states that the cones involved in percieving red and green don't mix well as opposed to say the light sensing cells for perceiving black and white which make a smooth transition from one colour to the other. Those responsable for red and green (which I had read before were the same cone but that apearantly isn't the case) give information that clashes strongly and the colour brown is suppose to be representative of that clashing info. How do you perceive the colour brown when there is no such thing as brown light?
This is what I have read at least.

 

[Jelfish]

The world would be a lot brighter if you could see radio waves.

 

[Danger]

The world would be a lot brighter if you could see radio waves.

But then we'd all have to buy 'anti-static' sunglasses.

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

Whatever has colour to do with beauty??
A black&white photograph can be highly satisfactory from an aesthetic point of view.

if done correctly, black and white photographs are the best photographic art, imho.

 

[arildno]

if done correctly, black and white photographs are the best photographic art, imho.

I would rather say that to make a truly brilliant black&white photograph is just within human capacity, whereas to make a similarly brilliant colour photograph is beyond that..
(Or at least, haven't been made yet.)

 

[Nereid]

Apparently some women (and only women, and only some) do have a richer colour sense than all other humans ... human cones (the colour sensors in the eye) come in three kinds, with spectral sensitivities that peak in the red, green, and blue regions (the sensitivities are broadband, not line; all three have at least some sensitivity to just about the whole optical region). Now the red cones actually come in two slightly different kinds - and because the genes for them are on the X chromosome, a woman may have the gene for each kind. Further, as the expression of such genes is at the cell level, these two kinds may be expressed randomly across the retina.

But then colour is, ultimately, all in the brain - you can 'see' colour without eyes! You 'just' need the right signals to travel along the optic nerve.

So, in a very real sense, you can take an image of something, in IR, UV, X-rays, ... and convert it to RGB, then fire up the relevant nerves and bingo! You will be 'seeing' in a whole different way. You can dial in the transforms (what range of em corresponds to R, what to G, and so on; and how to 'code' intensity (are our eyes 'logrithmic'? I forget), decide on how directly you want to get the signal to your brain (as indirect as a computer monitor; as direct as stimulation of the optic nerve - not possible yet, with much fidelity, I should imagine), how much you want to spend, ...

 

[robphy]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/medicalscience/story/0,9837,724257,00.html
http://starklab.slu.edu/humanUV.htm

 

[SAZAR]

There is no way for us, humans, to expirience a new colour. Only electronic equipment can interpretate images beyond our spectrum of vision, and translate it into visible spectrum recognisable to us...

There were some phylosophers (from ancient Greece) that thought - who knows - maybe each of the humans interpretate e.g. "Red" differently (or any other color for that matter), but, actually today we can easily conclude that it's falacy - I mean: there's a genetic blueprint by which we are all constructed - chemical formula of matter inside our optic cells - it's all quite specific - one error and a person is blind or daltonist... If someone could see more - the question is - would he/she be genetically compatible with regular people in order to "evoulutionize" human kind with that new feature...

It has to be some really complex process of evolution in order for some humans to see more - for example in IR or UV spectrum.

"Extra color" is unimaginable... you can't think of it - unexpiriencable...

...BUT! It's know that live beings evolve due to affect of the environment - with all the new sorts of radiations artificially produced by apparatures in use from the 2nd half of the 20th century and dramatically increasing as the time goes on - who knows what completely new senses will develope... (maybe some day a child will be born that could see a bright light of some new color radiating from all sorts of radio transmitters around him like light-bulbs, or a completely new internal sensory organ would develope slowly thorough generations that would enable humans to filter-out frequencies and "hear" them, who knows - maybe even to transmit them?..)

 

[SAZAR]

Maybe the answer is right before our eyes, only no one payed enough attention to it.

Maybe some retina-blind people are not actually blind, but they see in different spectrum. Maybe scientist could present them with all sorts of radiations (within healthy limits) so they could check it out.

(About my previous post - to correct myself: maybe it is possible to expirience some new color, but the mental power someone should have to do so must be exceptional (if not frightening)... try it... Expand your mind. Only it is hard for me to imagine how you could share your expirience with others... :) Maybe scientist could find a way to induce an expirience - some waves affecting brain, or some chemicals... probably a dangerous stuff too)

 

[SAZAR]

Another idea: make a surface covered with milions of tiny radio-wave receptors, and a radio-spectrum lense to focus the radio-wave "light", then make them convert different frequencies to different colors of our spectrum and see the effect (of course - such apparature should be encased in radio-wave-proof casing to avoid interference, and should have noise reduction to anullate the radiation produced by equipment itself). It should find a purpose - e.g. to quikly visualise the source of radio transmission.

(pay me for the idea or I'll sue )

 

[lingling]

I love your idea!

I can't promise it would be better if we can see more colours.

I could never "design" a new colour when i closed my eyes.

It should be why we need some imagination to make our lives more enjoyable, challenging and to strive for better