4 ms·
Interesting here is: Actually, for most blue butterflies, it’s not even a pigment-it’s just a trick of the light. Since blue is so rare in the biological world
by KellyCriterion 9mo ago
Interesting here is: Actually, for most blue butterflies, it’s not even a pigment-it’s just a trick of the light.
Since blue is so rare in the biological world (hardly any plants or animals can produce real blue chemicals), they evolved structural colors.
Their wings have these microscopic ridges that reflect blue light while canceling out other colors.
It’s basically the same reason the sky looks blue, just built into a wing. If you were to look at the wings from a different angle or get them wet, the blue often disappears because you're messing with that physical structure
- Sharlin 9mo agoNot just butterflies, birds too! But what selection pressure drove the evolution of these structural colors? Presumably signaling, the opposite of muted, camouflaging colors. Also, as many might know, blue eyes are the result of a lack of pigment (eumelanin). The iris is translucent, but Rayleigh scattering preferentially backscatters blue photons. Green eyes have some pigment, making them a mix of brown and blue.
- adrian_b 9mo agoAlso the blood veins that you see as bluish through the skin are blue for the same reason, due to light scattered in their walls.
- varispeed 9mo agoI thought they are green.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9mo agoDefinitely more blue/purple.
- jjtheblunt 9mo agoIt's also the trick employed by Iridigm, which Qualcomm acquired in late 2004 (i was there then). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_disp...
- amelius 9mo agoI'm curious how they were able to patent a technique invented by nature millions of years ago.
- jjtheblunt 9mo agothe displays have an array of switchable mirrors individually addressable, unlike nature in this case. (but sort of like chromophores in an octopus or cuttlefish, perhaps).
- amelius 9mo agoI see, but those MEMs mirrors were already invented.
- moron4hire 9mo agoInventions can be useful recombinations or applications of other inventions. They don't need to be wholly unique unto themselves. Indeed, the vast majority of them are not wholly unique.
- amelius 9mo agoWe're talking about a millions year old invention here.
- Dylan16807 9mo agoAs far as the patent system is concerned, 20 years and a million years are the same thing. If you combine some million year old things in a new way, you can get a patent.
- __MatrixMan__ 9mo agoI wonder if the interference-based-blue of the morpho butterfly evolved because it's difficult to make blue pigment for some reason having to do the chemistry of our biosphere, or if it's an evolutionary response to humans who may have captured the blue ones and ground them up for pigment (much like we did with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple snails). I'm not aware of any record of us having done so, but it's absolutely the kind of thing we would do, and there's much more pre-history than history when it might've happened.
- wasmperson 9mo agoAnother great example of "structural" blue that can be created artificially by heating steel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhjiIPohUyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhjiIPohUyw