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People Emit Visible Light
An Anonymous Reader writes "The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal. Japanese researchers have shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals."
Halos? Hmmmm
Life is not for the lazy.
This isn't any kind of new or unpredicted phenomenon. Everything that emits heat emits some light. The chances that the wavelength of a photon emitted by a human being (while giving off normal heat) will fall within the visible spectrum is very low, but given that we emit billions and billions of photons on a regular basis, it's sure to happen every now and then. Get sensitive enough cameras, and you'll see that glow from everything that isn't at absolute zero.
I thought this was discovered and establish in 2005 by Mitsuo Hiramatsu, a scientist at the Central Research Laboratory at Hamamatsu Photonics. The only new information I recognize is that it varies by time of day, not that people emit visible light. Did this new study find anything else out additionally or just make pretty pictures that show it?
My work here is dung.
So, I guess we really are all "Shiny Happy People!" I suppose next we should begin holding hands.
Whod've thunk it...
Shouldn't that be invisible light?
May be I can use this definition to claim my code is fully documented when the sole documentation is a line of comment that says, "Someday I should document this insane hack."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Does it mean if someone doesn't emit light is dead or 'un-dead' like Zombies or Vampires? Can I get a dead-dar that goes off if someone isn't emitting light?
:)
Maybe we should find a way to create solar panels that are powered from human body light to fight global warming?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Master Yoda called this back in The Empire Strikes Back: "Luminous beings are we...not this crude matter!"
People are visible, but they aren't all that bright.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
The OP divided by zero.
However, "barely visible to .0001% of humanity" seems to fit
With the right prothetic eyes, not any more :)
In PLoS One: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0006256
It's the Midi-Chlorian
duh
Similar "biophoton" phenomena have been studied in the past at the International Institute of Biophysics. It is most interesting as conventional theories do not predict such emissions.
The important thing here is we just discovered the solution to the energy crisis, all we need are MORE people.
Think about it; if 1 person emits light 1000 times too faint to see, that means 1000 people emit exactly enough light to see. All I need are 1000+ Chinese people willing to stand around in my hallway for a couple pennies a month and I don't need a nightlight to find my way to the pisser at 4am anymore!!!
"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." - Yoda
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If studies have shown the human eye can perceive as few as 5 photons (some say even fewer is perceivable), what exactly to they mean by 1000 times fainter? Just spread out in time, I suppose.
You keep using that word "visible". I do not think it means what you think it mean.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
We're made of the elements found in stars...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delenn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw
Though I don't think we necessarily glow brighter if we have a good idea. :-D
You plonks just sparkle. We shine.
Oh, and to E.T.: I've got your ouch right here.
So, since this light is directly related to biological processes, that means in theory it should be tied to mood. For instance, clinical depression is tied to a general depression of all physiological processes. So, it would stand to reason that if you're down, you would emit less light. Someone who is euphoric should look (relatively) like a lightbulb in comparison. I know in the article it says that the amount and color of light varies, I wonder if this would lead towards a mood-ring style ability to read emotions. For instance, someone who is emitting a "pensive" light spectrum, along with other biological cues like sweat, and fidgiting may be a good suspect for scrutiny.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sounds like this is confirmation of one's spirit, or chi (life force) in the eastern parlance.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Something in my kit of salvage electronics which I could never figure out what to use it for, to try and detect the presence of these "humans".
Now if only I can only safely generate the 1000-2000 volts to drive it.
Gee, I wonder what color I am? I hope it's blue.
:q! Oh crap, not again...
"Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter" -- Yoda
Faint radiation in the visible spectrum does not equal humanly visible. Headline should read: People Emit Visible-spectrum Radiation.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
The summary, most commenters, and largely the article itself seem to be missing the big point here
So yes, people glow, and yes, this was known previously. The point of the research is that this can be used, for studying circadian rythms and maybe identifying problems with it and metabolism. The scientist quoted is billed as a "circadian rhythm biologist," you've got to think he's probably not studying this to find out if people glow or not.
The information in the summary is thirdhand at best: whoever makes the summary makes it from an article, which in this case wasn't primary literature from the actual scientists but was AOL news or whoever "imaginova corp" is interviewing several japanese scientists about their work. AOL news seems to have misunderstood the research that they were writing about.
. . . to replace that old 25W bulb? I've been experimenting with these newfangled florescent thingies, but the labels always seem to lie like rugs: 1W = 1000GW!
Maybe I need to know how *bright* the things actually are. Like, how many humans would I need to illuminate the Library of Congress? That would seem like appropriate Slashdot units.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
with all the teenage girls already fantasizing about sparkling vampires, do we really need to feed their imaginations with this?
or is this a new era of teenage pickup lines: "I heard you like people who sparkle as a result of the sun hitting on their skins... baby, I emit my own light"
I'm curious if the glow we see on women is in relation to this type of thing, and for that matter, if theres some relation to free radicals in the body (linked to women living longer than men on average) is there a way to increase these reactions and cut down on free radicals as a result, I for one wouldn't mind being glow in the dark if it meant I were going to live an extra 10+ years, I'm sure there would be advantages to cutting the number of them lower in women as well. Hell, for that matter if theres a way to make yourself glow in the dark without cracking open a glowstick and coating yourself in it (not very comfortable) it would be great for raves :)
I once heard that the human eye can detect a single photon. I wonder how true that is. When I heard that, I thought that there must be some minimum threshold to trigger the optic nerves. Any thoughts about this?
Careful analysis tells me it is absolutely necessary for the survival of the human race to investigate photon emission from women. Since cloth would interfere with measurements, experiments will have to be clothing-free, and in a dark room. Volunteers are needed, apply now. Scientific requirements show a need for women between 18 and 40 with large busts. No pay, but refreshments will be served in sufficient quantities to achieve experimental results.
How humbling, though, to realize that a four-watt nightlight harbors something like a billion times more chi than you do.
crap, don't let skynet know
I'm still applying for a grant to research this, but I'm told people also emit a scented gas! Part of my research will focus on this 'silent but deadly' scenario as it appears this scent is not always accompanied by sound.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Light travels faster than sound -- thats why most people appear bright......until they open their mouth. --unknown
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
FTA: "...In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals."
This explains why the city of Berkeley (California) shows up so bright on satellite photos taken at night. Way too many free radicals.
(and I should know... I grew up there!)
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Charlie Murphy: "We gonna hang out with Rick James tonight, you know what I'm saying. And he comes out the room and I look at him and I'm not bullshitting, man I seen like an orange. His aura or whatever, I seen it. It was orange."
Correct. Doing a quick back of the envelope calculation a human body will emit one photon with a wavelength of 600nm every 10 seconds. If we scale that up by a factor of 1,000 that would mean the human eye would need to be capable of seeing a flux of 100 photons/second per unit solid angle. This is well below the threshold of a human eye - you'd need a photomultiplier or low temp photon counter device to pick this up. So clearly this is not the source of light.
Thank goodness. I thought it was just me who had nocturnal emissions.
I am just glowing with excitement!
Around 10% of the photons entering the eye will make it to the retina and tickle a receptor (e.g., a rod). Some experiments done in the 40s found that humans were generally able to detect pulses of light composed of only 90 photons... so, we'd need to get 90 in a fairly short (e.g., tens of milliseconds) time period in order to see it.
Anybody that's ever taken LSD could have told you that!
"1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive."
Interesting definition of "visible" -_-
I read that somewhere once...fact or fiction? If fact, then how can any light in visible wavelengths be "1000x" under the detection threshold of the human eye?
The visible spectrum. I agree that the headline is misleading, but I get what they meant.
Infrared, for instance, is invisible no matter how intense it is. For example, the infrared light from the LED on your TV remote is perfectly invisible to your eye, but a digital camera (which certainly isn't intended to be "incredibly sensitive") will pick it up just fine. Try it!
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Is there a way to measure this "light". Is there a correlation between health and this light for e.g.?
Great, this just means the aliens will have an even easier time hunting us down. I wonder if covering yourself in mud can block the photons?
All generalities are dangerous except ones that start with "All
I made the mistake of venturing outside and wandering to a beach about a month ago. After returning home at the end of the day, I was clearly visible in a dark room with the lights turned off.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Psy-vamps
Really just wanted to link to someones shitty tripod page
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!
If you eat less foods with anti-oxidants, eat more junk foods, and stress yourself out to the max... all in turn creating more free-radicals... will you glow brighter?
-- Everything is, nothing is as it seems.
This far into a story about a Japanese guy finding that people emit light and no one made a Dragon Ball Z reference.
For shame.
rememeber the football stadium and the pea at the center from back in school physics?
not this crude matter!
Citation here.
What, what, they're detecting midiclorians?
You're a little late to the I'd rather focus the discussion on some completely irrelevant point where the article was wrong party. If you scroll up you can see several places where you could have joined in on realizing that the word visible can mean different things based on context. Sometimes it is wise to read before you post.
The article claims that a biological process is producing this light, but it has no evidence to back this up. The light is at it's lowest at 10 AM and it's peak at 4 PM and is most visible on areas that are exposed to the sun. Doesn't it seem more likely that this is photoluminescence rather than bioluminescence?
It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
I think Tom Robbins talks about this in his novel Jitterbug Perfume, which was published back in 1984; comparing the tiny amounts of light a person gives off to halos. Not sure how this is news.
It's nice to know that people can shine no mater where they are and not just the ones at radioactive dump sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Hmm... what I was always told was that rod cells in the retina are sensitive to single photons. IIRC, that's also why spinthariscopes work. Now, sure, I understand that the probability of a random photon entering the eye hitting a rhodopsin pigment is fairly low, and the response could be inhibited by nearby neural cells, but it's still my understanding that you can see individual photons in very dark surroundings. So, is this threshold more of a "what people notice under normal lighting", or are these researching splitting photons somehow?
We probably just evolved from fluorescent monkeys
007: free radicals?
m: yes, toxins that destroy the body and brain. caused by eating too much red meat and white bread, and too many dry martinis.
007: (ponders) then i shall cut out the white bread sir.
Me.
What, you aren't familiar with synesthesia?
No, but I'm familiar with Chris Rice
what happens if sum1 farts....
extra halo around the ass?
I've always known that my eyes had a dull red glow some Saturday mornings.
It certainly felt like they were burning, anyway
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
John? The disciples?
I assume "no shit, join the club" would be in there somewhere if they had.
were photographing human (and other living things) "auras" a long time ago. I'm surprised no one else mentioned it. Really they were just taking photos of high voltage coronas around things, but hey, it was fun!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
..Japanese researchers just told us something we already knew, carrying out more experiments with technology they didn't invent - great. Let's give them the nobel's again..
This isn't a shock to anyone who actually works with heat transfer. Objects emit radiation at certain wavelengths according to Plank's Law evaluated at their absolute temperature. Objects at ~ 310K do emit a small amount in the visible spectrum.
Move on folks, nothing to see here...
This is why I like hanging out in a place less likely to be filled with Twilight fangirls :)
It's common knowledge that psychedelics enhance sensitivity to light, among other things. The pupils dilate wider than the Missippi. All those references to people "shining", I think, were literal as much as metaphorical. The acid-eaters knew this 50 years ago.
1. The rods of the human retina can react to a single photon. However, to be consciously perceived between 5 and 10 photons must be detected within 100 milliseconds. To pick up light that's 'visible', but "1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive" ('Which is, of course, impossible. -- Hitchhiker's Guide) the researchers in TFA are claiming to detect small fractions of a photon (repeat HHG assertion here).
As stated, the above applies to conscious perception. A normally non-conscious perception via an alternate visual channel has been proven to exist. This 'blindsight' has been discussed here previously http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/24/2330245 . It has been shown to not only exist in the sighted, but can be trained in them so to become functional. There was a school for this in New Mexico that was written up in Co-Evolution Quarterly almost 20 years ago. In the discussion thread here, more than one person admitted to having developed or noticed having this ability.
2. The spirit of we two legged can become attuned to the spirit of the four legged, and so the hunter can find prey in darkness, and one can also avoid becoming hunted. Likewise, we can feel the spirit of the standing people (trees) and so find our way between them with surprising speed. Although it works as though it were sight, because it is a working of the spirit, the impressions received are not detected as visual images to the mind, but only to the spirit.
I've got a lot of academic training in #1. I've got some training, and have ancestors with a lot more in #2. They may be incompatible, but since no viewpoint perfectly and completely describes reality, none can be said to be the only truth. In any case, learning to use dark sight doesn't require believing either.
Still, there ain't no such as pieces of photons.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The body emits all other sorts sorts of energy at different wavelengths... heat, a minor electrical field, etc. So it really does not surprise me that the body would emit a low amount of light on top of all of this. Who knows maybe something useful will come out of this finding (IE some sort of diagnostic tool, as was mentioned.)
I have seen Paris Hilton glows in the dark before.
I learn new things the hard way.
call these guys "cliche busters"
the cliche" "the sun could shine out of his/hers arse"
is now possible
What I want to know is whether it is true that pregnant women "glow." Who wants to test whether pregnant women emit more light than usual?
A lifetime of being in a nuclear power plant has left me with a healthy green glow.
Stephen King's Insomnia anyone?
Now all we have to figure out is how to collect that light into a ball of energy in between our palms and we're set!
Given that antioxidants neutralize free radicals, here's a test one could do to see if free radicals really are involved.
Take two groups of people. Group #1 are people who's on the paleolithic diet (stone age diet), with very high intakes of antioxidants and thus a low level of free radicals. And group #2 are on the fast food diet or something that's really low in antioxidants and thus have a high consentration of free radicals in their bodies.
I would expect to see more light from group #2.
"1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive."
So finally - We can actually calculate exactly how many humans it takes to replace a light bulb.
problem with this very faint halo is you would need to go naked to maximize your chance of being seen in the dark ...
Well, I would have modded it funny.
And, while I'm at it, can we stop trying to make things smaller by multiplying them by large numbers? "1000 times less intense" is a nonsense. "A one thousandth as intense" or "a thousandth of the intensity" is what they mean. If you can't handle fractions, then "it would need to be a thousand times brighter to be visible to the naked eye".
There may be something to metabolism around "afterglow", women glowing when they're pregnant, unusual mental capacity, etc. which could easily generate 10 or 100 x the intensity observed in this study, and thus be observable by many people. (All sorts of biological processes span several orders of magnitude in concentration, intensity, energy, etc., and plenty of other bio-luminescent organisms show that the energy levels required to emit naked eye visible light are mostly not harmful to the organism.)
Excuse me for not sharing your excitement, but this is way too close to some happy new-age hippie karma pipe dream. Sorry about that, but please apply a little bit of critical thought here.
The light in question is 1000 times less intense than our sensitivity. Even if you increase it hundredfold it does not become observable by many people. It is STILL invisible - in absolute darkness, nonetheless.
Your ideas further assume this invisible light could be noticeable in broad daylight. Which, I am afraid to say, almost certainly brings this idea well into crackpot land.
Others can probably expand further on why we need a certain amount of photons for the receptors in our eyes to trigger and how it would be impossible for that mechanism to work when we're 3 orders of magnitude off the threshold.
I lost my sig.
Isn't that infrared light, or heat signature that everything with a temperature emits? The naked eye can't see it but special tools (infrared lenses) can.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
You need to learn some quantum physics - which is actually where the Planck spectrum comes from. The universe does not define photon energies (i.e. wavelengths) to such an arbitrary precision. In addition the spectrum comes from the allowed standing waves which the object can emit. While the spacing of these is tiny it is not a continuus spectrum - although given the limitations on measuring the wavelengths precisely it appears so.
Geordi LaForge told William Riker years ago (ahead?) that he could see everyone's glow with his VISOR.
Star Trek predicts the future again?
Well we do burn calories and we produce heat in the process. Is light without heat possible?
Was this test conducted near Hiroshima?