People Emit Visible Light 347
An Anonymous Reader writes "The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal. Japanese researchers have shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals."
Establish in 2005 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:New definition of visible. (Score:3, Informative)
From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be detected by) the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light."
Re:nothing special... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:New definition of visible. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:nothing special... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1,000 times too faint to see? (Score:5, Informative)
Visible in this context doesn't mean perceptible, it's describing the wavelength, not the intensity. The light is very low intensity that has a wavelength within the visible spectrum.
Re:nothing special... (Score:3, Informative)
It is definitely unpredicted by conventional theory. The visible part of the black-body radiation spectrum (which you seem to be referring to) for an object at human-body temperature is far less than 1/1000th of what is still visible. These emissions are therefore not thermal. And the is no other conventional theory that mandates such emissions.
Re:Biophotons (Score:1, Informative)
It's just simple blackbody radiation. Anything with a temperature emits blackbody radiation, which is made up of photon that are mostly infrared. But the various photons have different frequencies, and some of those frequencies are in the visible spectrum.
Re:nothing special... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:nothing special... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1,000 times too faint to see? (Score:3, Informative)
And you're playing a semantic trick where you take a word with multiple definitions, and change the definition you're using from the one that was clearly implied by the original context.
In the headline "People Emit Visible Light", "Visible" means "in the visible portion of the spectrum". "Visible Light", especially in a scientific context, usually means "light which is in the visible portion of the spectrum".
Re:nothing special... (Score:5, Informative)
not a bell curve [wikipedia.org]
But it is a distribution, and the human body does radiate some visible photons. This phenomenon, however, is theorized not thermal radiation, but as something else.
Re:Michael Stipe was right! (Score:4, Informative)
A flu mask is really only effective at stopping yourself from spreading germs when you're sick. It isn't really going to help keep you from getting sick from other people's germs.
Nothing special aside from what was in TFA (Score:4, Informative)
The summary, most commenters, and largely the article itself seem to be missing the big point here
So yes, people glow, and yes, this was known previously. The point of the research is that this can be used, for studying circadian rythms and maybe identifying problems with it and metabolism. The scientist quoted is billed as a "circadian rhythm biologist," you've got to think he's probably not studying this to find out if people glow or not.
The information in the summary is thirdhand at best: whoever makes the summary makes it from an article, which in this case wasn't primary literature from the actual scientists but was AOL news or whoever "imaginova corp" is interviewing several japanese scientists about their work. AOL news seems to have misunderstood the research that they were writing about.
Re:Your missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
You lie. That film had ONE main part. Any evidence of some kind of 'sequel' was planted by the machines to confuse your mind.
Re:nothing special... (Score:4, Informative)
The chance of emission at higher energies decreases exponentially. You're getting far, far, far more exposure to ionizing radiation from the naturally radioactive potassium in others' bodies than by their black-body emission.
Re:1,000 times too faint to see? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that's obvious... well, other than the fact that they don't emit visible light by the definition I'd normally assume was meant. Since I can look around and see that they don't...
It's extremely obvious if you're aware of the meaning of "visible light" in a scientific context. Anytime you see the phrase "visible light" in the same sentence as "scientists say" or "researchers have shown", then it is nearly 100% certain that this is the intended meaning. The clincher would be if you consider the layman's definition of "visible", realize that this is clearly not true, then consider the scientific definition and realize it is the only one that makes sense. Of course this still depends on knowing the scientific definition.
And I'll admit I'm rather shocked that so many /.ers apparently don't know that meaning of the phrase "visible light". I know we have a more diverse background than we used to, but I still figured the average slashdotter was likely to have gotten a science degree where basic physics was a requirement, or at least have payed more attention than normal in high school physics or even just read the many science/astronomy related articles posted here, or read xkcd, or something.
It made more sense to me when I just assumed people were being pedantic dicks. :P
Rate is far too low for this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Biblical? (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't, as such. What we know as a "halo" is more of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon knock-off of something that appears in a lot of early Christian art as a nimbus - a sort of glowing aura around Jesus and sometimes an accompanying Lamb. According to this wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] the concept was used earlier in a lot of other historical religious art too before becoming bastardized by pop culture's somewhat clumsy literal interpretation.
Re:1,000 times too faint to see? (Score:3, Informative)
And you're assuming that Slashdot headlines are viewed as Scientific forum (capitalization used to emphasize your bias).
When the sentence containing the phrase in question also includes the phrase "scientists reveal" and the next sentence includes "researchers show", then it is probably safe to interpret it in a scientific context.
I will admit that I am biased towards thinking that most slashdotters would have attended and been interested enough to pay attention to high school or entry-level college physics. I realize that's not true. I guess I'm just really surprised that the term "visible light" is outside so many /.ers experience.
Slashdot is not a scientific forum, but a nerd-emphasised general forum.
Uh-huh. And one common attribute of nerds -- at least a virtue of anyone who I would call a nerd as a compliment -- is the desire to learn. When I read articles on /. about things not in my area of expertise, I often learn things from the article and from other readers who are familiar with the terms and phrases used in the article. It's one of the more enjoyable aspects of this forum.
And now you know what "visible light" means in a scientific context. That's the most common context for that phrase, by the way. When talking in layman's terms, using "visible" to describe "light" would generally be redundant. Nobody would say "Then I saw a visible light shining through the woods."
Slashdot may not be a scientific forum, but there are a lot of science articles on it. So you should be prepared to see scientific terms and to interpret them in a scientific context. You should probably not be upset when a scientific article uses scientific terms.
Thus the common or vernacular definition should always be used, and the editors should remember that headlines are summaries of the article and stand alone frequently without further explanation.
Okay, so next time an article mentions "infrared", it should instead specify "electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between 750 nm and 100 m" so that readers don't say "What's infrared? I know from latin that 'infra' means 'below', but what's 'below' red? Maroon? Fuchsia?" Er, but wait, "electromagnetic" and "wavelength" don't aren't vernacular in any way... So no science terms? No technical terms? How do you even describe what this article is about using only vernacular definitions?
Look, I don't understand a lot of legal terms (for one example among many), but I'm not about to ask that every YRO article avoids using them, or kvetch about it when I fail to comprehend a term and am corrected.
Re:link to paper (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a little worried that their first reference is Fritz-Albert Popp, who's kind of a pseudoscientific quack and into biophotonics [wikipedia.org], which is often used to try to validate things like homeopathy [hpathy.com].
Re:Can't the eye detect single photons? (Score:5, Informative)
Close. A single photon is capable of making a single cell (rod) in your retina fire. To actually perceive light, you need around 9 or 10 rods to fire at around the same time. Problem here is that only around 10% of the photons entering your eye end up striking a receptor - the rest are reflected off of the cornea, get absorbed in the vitreous humor (fluid inside the eye), or pass through the retina without striking a spot where a receptor is located.
Re:Biblical? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Biblical? (Score:5, Informative)
Also a lot of people don't know this but the Super Devil doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible.
Re:Biblical? (Score:2, Informative)
If there are people who have vision that is 1,000 times normal, then they must get blinded by the sun really easily...
Poor dogs! I hear that their sense of smell is something like 5000 times more sensitive than ours. They must not be able to smell anything when there is a strong aroma!
Or thing of the cats who can see "in the dark". Well it's not really the dark it's just thousands of time less bright than daylight. Which means that in the daytime they must get blinded!
Should I continue? :)
Re:Biblical? (Score:3, Informative)
You don't even have to assume some people are more sensitive to light, and can "see" it.
There was a study a while ago about conscious and subconscious sight. Apparently certain kinds of blindness leave subconscious vision semi in-tact, so although the person couldn't see, he could snap his eyes shut if a bug was about to hit them.
"Halos" might not even be literal halos, so much as a feeling you get when looking at someone.
Your subconscious doesn't have a lot of ways to communicate. It's limited to feelings and reactions, mostly? I think this could all be processed subconsciously, so that our conscious mind would never know.
Re:Rate is far too low for this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Biblical? (Score:2, Informative)
The retina of the eye contains two types of light sensitive cells: cones and rods. The cones [wikipedia.org] are responsible for the eye's ability to distinguish colour and function well in good lighting conditions. The cones are further broken down into three types of cones, each sensitive to one of the three primary colours. The rods [wikipedia.org] are responsible for providing vision when the ambient lighting is low. There is only one type of rod. As a result, when observing in very low light conditions, the eye can only see in black and white.
The rods are located near the outer edges of the retina. This is why very distant stars that are barely visible appear brighter if you use your peripheral vision to view them by looking off to the side.
Re:Biblical? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Biblical? (Score:2, Informative)