Seeing a Little of the Light
When our eyes are accustomed to darkness, we are able to see a very small amount of light from quite a long way off. (Smart cowboys on sentry duty didn't smoke because the flame and the coal could easily be spotted. This is a "no brainer" for modern military personnel.) When in a dark room, people tend to look for the small bit of light that is coming in under the door or whatever.
It has been theorized for decades that the human eye can see a single photon—
"That's terrific news! Uh, what's a photon?"
Without getting too physics-al with you, light has puzzled scientists since way back when. Some theorized that light has a wave nature, others said it is comprised of particles. Seems to be both. A photon is the smallest possible unit, and they suspicion that it has no mass. For those who want more details, click here.
So anyway, a test has been done to show that we are able to see the tiniest known unit of light. Which is amazing, since the brain is a mighty busy place, and there are many possible ways to have false positive readings. It's also a wet environment at a decent temperature. Scientists used their intelligently designed equipment in special cold and dry conditions so they could experiment. Then those owlhoots had the nerve to marvel at how chance and random evolutionary processes could make the human eye and brain. Evolution had nothing to do with it. The specified complexity involved demonstrates the handiwork of the Master Designer. Sure wish you could see the light, old son.
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| Image credit: Pixabay / Hans |
"That's terrific news! Uh, what's a photon?"
Without getting too physics-al with you, light has puzzled scientists since way back when. Some theorized that light has a wave nature, others said it is comprised of particles. Seems to be both. A photon is the smallest possible unit, and they suspicion that it has no mass. For those who want more details, click here.
So anyway, a test has been done to show that we are able to see the tiniest known unit of light. Which is amazing, since the brain is a mighty busy place, and there are many possible ways to have false positive readings. It's also a wet environment at a decent temperature. Scientists used their intelligently designed equipment in special cold and dry conditions so they could experiment. Then those owlhoots had the nerve to marvel at how chance and random evolutionary processes could make the human eye and brain. Evolution had nothing to do with it. The specified complexity involved demonstrates the handiwork of the Master Designer. Sure wish you could see the light, old son.
How well designed is the human visual system? Biophysics researchers from the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Austria and Rockefeller University recently demonstrated that people can see just a single photon of light. This led them to ask how evolution could have crafted a visual system sophisticated enough to overcome the overwhelming problem of discerning single photons from the sea of electromagnetic, molecular, and electrochemical "noise" inside a human head.To read the rest, click on "Human Vision Can Sense a Single Photon".