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Arch0wl 05-23-2004 05:53 AM

Eyes
 
I read somewhere that there's a limit to how many colors the human eye can possibly see, or something to that extent, I'm not positive on this. If infact there were other beings or advanced or higher lifeforms, is there a possibility of a new primary color(s) existing? Or things they can see but we can't?

mizelle59 05-23-2004 09:22 AM

I've always wondered if there was a color we actually couldn't see, for one reason or another. If there was though, and it was somehow discovered through the aid of technology or aliens with 20/20 vision or whatever, how would we still know? I doubt it could be described to us. And if they tried showing the color, we obviously would probably still not see it.

Sooo yeah, if there was actually another primary color and people tried telling us, most of us would laugh at the discoverers and call them crackpots and liars.

Anticrombie0909 05-23-2004 09:53 AM

Colors do not actually exist. They are simply the wavelength that light is refracted at, translated into colored images by our brain. Theoretically, if other creatures could view different wavelengths than us, they would see a different range of colors. For example, bees see in ultraviolet light. Therefore, to them, the world would appear...similar to a photo negative.

lightdarkness 05-23-2004 09:56 AM

awww man, anti beat me too it. But there are only the colors of the rainbow on the color spectrem, and then like he said the different ultra and micro and stuff like that. I wonder if those would actually omit a color if we could see them. Interesting...

GuidoHunter 05-23-2004 01:34 PM

Anti = win.

But yeah, the only "colors" we can see are those in the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. But how did that area become labeled as the visible spectrum? Because that's what we can see. All sorts of creatures can see in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, but us trying to discuss what those areas would look like to us would be ridiculous, as you can't explain the color red to a blind man.

But what about the colors that Arch spoke of that we can't see? Our eyes are only sensitive to a few wavelengths (colors) of light, but our brain can process the rest, so we are able to see all the colors.

Our ears do something similar. When we hear certain frequencies at certain amplitudes, certain other frequencies become impossible to hear at any amplitude. MP3 compression takes advantage of this and cuts out the data regarding those frequencies that we can't hear, though that's not the only way it compresses..

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

aight 05-23-2004 02:57 PM

we cant see carbon monoxide. maybe it is a color that we do not see.

IronMonk 05-23-2004 02:59 PM

ahhh, yes, considder the what the would would be like if we had perfect perception, ie can see the full wavelength of light and so forth, and be able to hear the intire array of sound frequencies. and so onb and so forth with smell and echo location, and jacobsons organs and other such means of perception.

the onlything that i could think would happen would be that the person would go insane from sensory overload.

GuidoHunter 05-23-2004 03:06 PM

Your body already shuts many senses down to avoid overload. How often do you feel your socks or underwear? Only when you think about it. Come to think of it, that response may not be to avoid sensory overload, but rather to just conserve energy and resources.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

SotN 05-23-2004 04:35 PM

Our eyes can distingish between roughly 16 million (24 bits for those of you in the know) colors. So anything beyond that just "rounds" to the nearest available color. This is why there's always a color to see, even though it might not be in our range of percivable colors. Except at the extremes, then they're omitted altogether.

Jam930 05-24-2004 08:09 AM





listen to the song "Vitamin" by Incubus.
Great song, and you might learn something.

From Vitamin by Incubus:
"Until the 20th century reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see and hear.
Since the original publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see and hear is less than one billionth...of reality."

Tsuguri 05-24-2004 08:46 AM

If it was possible to see every single wavelength and frequency, and these so called "imaginary colors" that Arch talked about were now visible, couldn't it become rather crowded visually? That'd be like if all atoms and molecules we're visible to the naked eye. They'd be all we saw. Kinda like swimming in those ball pits at McDonald's. :P

Chrissi 05-24-2004 09:20 AM

I love Incubus. And yes that's a great song, I listened to it all the time when I was younger. I couldn't quite figure out what he was saying, thanks for the lyrics. :P

evilbutterfly 05-24-2004 06:12 PM

if we could see everything, it'd be hard to see anything. for example, we would have trouble making out details on somebody's face because of the infared radiation coming from them, and glass wouldnt be clear because it reflects UV light. and it's not like we could just tune out those colors. i mean, can u suddenly think "ok, for right now, i'm not gonna see the color red" and have it happen? no. therefore, it's good that we can only see so much.

other creatures have different sensory abilities for different reasons. bees see ultraviolet so they can better distinguish between flowers. mosquitos can see infared in order to hunt down the warm blood of their victims. elephants and whales use ultra low frequency sound to communicate long distances, and bats and dolphins use high frequency sounds to see things. and the funny thing is, we can do all this without having the innate ability to do so. RADAR, SONAR, thermal goggles, radios, fiber optics, and many other devices allow us humans to use different wavelengths of sound and light.

and i will leave u with a question:
if we were all born blind, would we ever find out that light exists at all?

DracIV 05-24-2004 08:39 PM

Actually, tuning out colors and choosing the part of the spectrum you need to see is exactly how you would do it.

If we were all born blind, would we care if light exists?

Jam930 05-25-2004 04:35 AM

we would, why are some days hot and some days cold? mass sunlight. sunburns etc. not felt by sight but just pain or the sense of feel...

why do some people call it the sense of touch...put a stake through your leg and you feel it...it has nothing to do with touch. i guess you could say the stake touched you really hard...nvm. back on topic.

i dont know if we would call it sunlight, we'd probably name it the way hawaiians do. it'd be like "ahhhtatatata"...that wasn't really on topic either.

we'd definately know there was light, just because we feel it.


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