3 ms·
Interesting study, though if you look at the results 'significantly above chance' looks to be 0.60 +/- .05, which is indeed better than 0.50 but not what anyone
by photochemsyn 4y ago
Interesting study, though if you look at the results 'significantly above chance' looks to be 0.60 +/- .05, which is indeed better than 0.50 but not what anyone could call reliable detection.
I wonder if trained owls could detect single photons, or if their night vision is based on just having much larger lenses that collect more light?
It seems that all rods in retinas are activated by single-photon-absorption, it's just about how many have to be activated to generate a neural signal.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629483/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629483/
- kstrauser 4y agoOwl eyes have really cool adaptations (see https://abcbirds.org/blog/owl-eyes/ https://abcbirds.org/blog/owl-eyes/). If we can somewhat detect single photons, it seems very likely owls could do it much more repeatably.
- tshaddox 4y agoIt wasn’t clear to me whether that 0.60 accounted for the fact (mentioned in the overview) that only 10% of photons reaching the eye actually make it through.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago"Significantly" in statistics does not mean "reliably", but "confidently".