Weekend Roundup (20 science blurbs guaranteed to blow your hair back while contemplating design :o)

CEH ^ | October 4, 2009

[GodGunsGuts]

Weekend Roundup

--snip--

Picture Highlight: the new Herschel Space Telescope, is seeing first light and creating dramatic images of gas clouds in the Milky Way...

[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[count-your-change]

The question, “Are objects really the color they seem to us, or is color a property of our eyes and brains?”, was asked in #18.
At least one answer can be provided by a disc with alternating black and white radial lines on it. When spun at the proper speed the eye will interpret the white to black to white stimulation of the eye’s light receptors as color whereas there is actually no color.
Where is the color being created except in the interplay between eye and brain.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[blackpacific]

White light has all the colors in it. This can be demonstrated by a good set primary colored pastels.

What is amazing to me about the eye, is that it has three types of color receptors, each with its own luminosity function. From the relative intensities among those three Planckians the brain is able to “make” millions of colors. If you Google “luminosity function” you will find many good explanations of the three types of cones (red-blue-green!). Here is a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision

Of course, there is a nonsequitor paragraph about evolution, lest we give the designer of the photo receptor array any credit.

[count-your-change]

Thanks. Always a fascinating subject. I’ll skip the evo pap.