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Universe Pale Turquoise, On Average

Posted by timothy on from the slashdot's-cosmic-color-scheme dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "AP is reporting that the average color of the universe is a "sprightly" turquoise-green. If only they'd known before the new iMacs came out! Link is to Salon.com."

4 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Little known fact by PD · · Score: 3, Informative

    Our sun is actually pale green in color. So that's yet another thing that makes us average.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
    1. Re:Little known fact by PD · · Score: 3, Informative

      Check the website: here

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
    2. Re:Little known fact by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 4, Informative

      Bullshit.

      Start with any light whose energy is broad on the spectrum, add a low energy but very narrowly focused spike of green, and these guys would call the color "green" because of a single spike on a spectrogram. Color perception is computed by an integral of intensity over wavelength, not by looking at the highest intensity peek.

      To nit-pick, because it's 1:30am and I'm bored:

      The sun's emission spectrum is a blackbody curve. Most of its light emission is near the high-frequency end of this curve. Thus, if the peak is in the green range, most of the rest of its light emission will be *near* that range.

      While I agree that the sun doesn't look green ("yellow-white" was the term used by the FAQ referred to previously), to say that the argument is completely misleading is silly. This isn't a little, narrow spike - it's a great big wide peak at the crest of a quickly rising curve.

      And on that note, I'm going to bed.

  2. The Color of the Universe by Trinn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, given that the colors are indeed given as normed values, essentially all they give us is a hue and a saturation, no luminosity. Assuming a full luminosity (highest given # is is equal to FF), it easily computes to:
    RED:0xB1
    GREEN:0xFF
    BLUE:0xE1
    I used the WinXP Powertoys calculator...and actually, it gives decimals...err....well, it puts a . into hex numbers and gives you what probably amounts to 1/16, 1/256, etc. places after it....just in case anyone's interested.
    --me(who else?)