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Quick science question; not real important, just something that never came up before that I’ve wondered about:
Are their hard boundaries or special characteristics defining “ultraviolet light” and “infrared light” from normal light, or are these just where we humans mark the limits of our own vision? (As in, anything beyond what we can see with our eyes in this direction is “ultraviolet” and anything beyond what we can see in the other direction is “infrared”, and there’s not much special about it aside from it’s outside of our own visual range?)
Presuming the latter, say we had a person with a mild visual impairment similar to colourblindness that reduced the range of the light spectrum they personally could see. Could you have a light that was considered “infrared” (or UV) to them but just normal everyday light to someone with regular vision?
They’re just where we humans mark the limits of our vision. Other animals have a different visual range. Bees famously see what we call ultraviolet but can’t see red.
Actually, the human retina can respond to UV too, but the lens can’t properly focus across more than about an octave, so the cornea has a UV filter in it. During WWII, cataract patients with artificial corneas were recruited by the British military and trained in Morse Code. Since their corneas didn’t filter out UV, they could see black-light lamps operated by spies on the other side of the English Channel.
It’s more than just beyond what humans can see. I’ve heard of 2 shades of UV and 3 of IR (if I recall correctly). These shades are based on having different properties. The 3 inferred have different temperatures among other things. Also the ‘bandwidth’ of the shades is comperable to the nearest visible colors (the red end being wider than the violet one). Past these shades the properties change radically until they don’t respond like light.
Before I got cataracts my night vision was legendary, as in sunglasses at night without tripping over things in the dark. Post cataracts I’m tripping over things anytime the lights get low. I think I would like living on an Orion ship if they can fix my cataracts.