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Fun fact - Some humans can see UV light. People that have had their lenses removed, normally due to having cateracts surgically removed. I know this because i h
by FergusN 3y ago
Fun fact - Some humans can see UV light. People that have had their lenses removed, normally due to having cateracts surgically removed. I know this because i had my lenses removed at 3 months old and have worn contact lenses my enitre life. The first time i became aware i could see UV light was in a bowling alley with black lights, where one of my contact lenses had uv filtering and the other did not. A very disorienting experience. This is my very low-key superpower.
- lucb1e 3y agoStupid question probably: does sunlight on days where there are high UV radiation warnings (announced so people know to not stay in the sun too long and avoid sunburns) look any different to you? Do you know what part of the UV spectrum you can see? Edit: hmm, and the article's abstract says that reindeer' eye fluid is 60% transparent to UV (I assume that means "60% at the average thickness/depth of a reindeer eye from lens to retina"). That sounds like other animals' generally does not. Does humans'? I guess it must if you're seeing it, or you have special eye fluid!
- FergusN 3y agoNo stupid questions. This is not something i have noticed before. I don't think I am able to discern the difference to be honest. The sun during the day just looks like white, yellowish light to me.
- joshspankit 3y agoIs there a way to compare what you see with what the average person sees? Would a “calibrated” photograph of a sunny day let you “see” what people see when they have “normal” vision?
- Fr0styMatt88 3y agoFellow aphakic here, can confirm. I never knew what people were talking about when they said blacklights, they just look like a real bright intense pinkish/purple light. I only realised one day when I noticed that some kinds of lights looked really dark through my glasses but really bright when I took them off.
- bongodongobob 3y agoNo, what you and OP are noticing is the overlap of the UV filtering and near UV visible range with your lenses.
- Fr0styMatt88 3y agoI have been curious in the past about how much of it is that effect (ie- how much further away from the ‘visible’ UV spectrum I can actually see). It’d be interesting to know.
- perihelions 3y agoI found some experimental data from other people with aphakia: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(92)90166-g https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(92)9016... ("Scotopic spectral sensitivity of phakic and aphakic observers extending into the near ultraviolet") It looks like it's basically the entire ~315-420nm range. And, we normal/phakic people are technically sensitive to all of those wavelengths too—they're just very heavily, not completely, attenuated by lens absorption. Your relative sensitivity is greater by a factor of maybe 10,000, at 350 nm.
- lucb1e 3y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding, but is that not what they are saying?
- bongodongobob 3y agoThey aren't seeing UV, they are seeing the near UV that that the UV filter overlaps with.
- true_religion 3y agoIf UV lights look like normal pink or white lights to you, then you can see that spectrum.
- 3y ago
- whalesalad 3y agoI thought most humans could? I can definitely discern UV light from other sources. What does it look like to you? Very curious. A white shirt, white teeth etc dawn a very bizarre bright appearance under UV light. Tennis balls too.
- colechristensen 3y agoThose things you mention are fluorescent. They reemit UV light at different frequencies. Anyone with normal vision sees that.
- whalesalad 3y agoYeah so for someone who can “see” uv light what does that mean? No one can see light we only see the reflection off surfaces.
- BurningFrog 3y agoThe way to distinguish it is to look directly at the UV light "bulb". If you can see that unreflected light you have very unusual sight powers. I don't now if this is even possible, but someone up thread claims they can do it.
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- RoyalHenOil 3y agoIf you have a UV light and look at the bulb or LED, you don't see any light coming from it at all? The bulb just looks to you like it isn't on? UV bulbs look bright purple to me. They are so intense, I can barely even look at them directly. I always thought they were called black lights because they do not appear to light up a room (excepting materials that fluoresce under UV light); the UV light itself is very bright, but everything else stays almost as black as if there were no light at all. I don't think I can see UV light, though. I don't see UV patterns on flowers that have them, for example. I think I am just seeing some violet light that UV bulbs also release, and maybe it feels so bright because the invisible UV stings my eyes.