4 ms·
I'm not sure if this exchange means that there is no good reason to do that, or if it means that the reason why one would want to do that is blindingly obvious
by gknoy 9y ago
I'm not sure if this exchange means that there is no good reason to do that, or if it means that the reason why one would want to do that is blindingly obvious to everyone except me. :)
- tempestn 9y agoThe reason you want to see wavelengths that don't penetrate your environment is so that you can see your environment.
- edaemon 9y agoNone of that light would ever reach your eyes for you to see it, though, right? Or am I missing something really obvious?
- tempestn 9y agoYeah, if the water is the surroundings. I was answering the broader question of not wanting light to penetrate "your surroundings" - ie the desk in front of me or walls around me. Would make life difficult if everything was transparent. Normally when one talks about "surroundings" it means that stuff, not the air (analogous to the water for marine life) both of which obviously need to be at least somewhat transparent for vision to be useful.
- ethbro 9y agoMaybe I should have elaborated a bit more. My original point was that it makes sense that the visible spectrum was colocated with the frequencies not readily absorbed by water. Which is to say, eyes were made for seeing the light that was bouncing around in the sea (and not the frequencies that had already been absorbed). So yes, the simplest answer you can imagine.