Klaynos

This to me is key. If you can't test it then you can't distinguish them. If you can't distinguish then what's the point in the discussion?

The original question was "how can you tell?". This post expanded the point somewhat. How can you quantify trueness to compare models?

Test test, is my post visible? Because the op is either ignoring the question is how you can tell or can't see my posts.

I'm still interested in this. If you can test which model is closer to "truth" then they are distinguishable and the "better" model wins. If you cannot test then there's no way of knowing and you could speculate until the cows come home but it would make no difference and you could never know.

This is the question that I found myself wanting to ask several times on reading this thread.

! Moderator Note Puppypower, if you want to talk about your idea please do it in its own thread in speculations (and read the relevant rules and guidelines)

10 pages in a couple of seconds including bibtex and pdflatex a couple of times. Think my PhD thesis only took seconds. Never felt like a reason to increase performance.

There's also lots of amateur clubs, there's an old research observatory near where I live that is completely restored and run by a not for profit club. They do some really interesting things, quite varied from restoring old optics to cube sat receives. They even use breaks in radar signals to detect meteorites which is really cool.

I work in a field not even dimly related to my PhD. Like ajb's brother I was massively over qualified for my first king term job after PhD, fortunately due to good management a bit of luck and really enjoying what I did and do I wasn't in that position for too long. As others have said it depends what you mean by scientist. Where I work most of the scientists have degrees, a couple are those who have done it by experience via labs etc. But that is unusual. Most recent employees have masters degrees or PhDs. More and more a bsc isn't enough.

Commander, I reviewed your to earlier. Both positive and negative points have been awarded by a broad range of people. With significant overlap of people who have given you negative points have also given positive. You're not being targeted.

It's more complicated than that. Because if the 3 overlapping sensors and complicated data processing that the brain does.

But it doesn't work like a spectrometer. There are only 3 wavelength dependent types of sensor with broad overlap. That's how a TV can make lots of colours with only 3 colour emitters.

You need a spectrometer and a mathematical definition of white.

That depends on how you define colour. If you define it as the frequency of light then the observer doesn't matter. That's not a very human way to define it though.

I think the metastable state sounds the most realistic. Especial as there are similar things people will have interacted with (phase change hand warmers).

The sun is a relatively temporally consistent source. It never provides an equal number of photons at every frequency though. Google, spectrum of sunlight.

It's always fun after wearing them for a good few hours. Continuous number of photons from a source across the visible spectrum would be very blue in terms of energy and intensity. But as Swansont's post suggests it might not look blue to the human eye (because they're crap sensors). We still need to understand your questions a little more.

Supercontinuous sources exist for a given range. What do you mean by all frequencies? Even a single source that does THz to UV is non trivial. If even possible. And equal amount, amount of what? Photons, energy, intensity?

Reaching as jpg well ruin quality, you're right, most of the time you can limit this in what ever editor you're using by reducing compression at the expense of such size, should always start fresh with the original (have a back up). Exr is a good option. Things like darktable allow you to just exit without saving but maintain a record of your changes in another file which is applied next time you open it. Raw is the best option for getting the data off if the camera, highest quality, less likely to cause issues whilst editing. Lots of compacts allow it now as well. I've used it on my DSLR for years. Whilst the camera setup I have/want us expensive it should last years. My current camera body is now 10 years old. I'm only wanting to replace it for better low light photography and a bit of weather proofing. I won't replace any of my lenses.

You might find that using led changing the white balance would help. I imagine fluorescent might be best but not sure though. I would advise against PNG for photos, jpg whilst lossy is good for busy images, PNG is more suited to large blocks or lines.

Can you change the white balance on the camera/in post processing using raw.

Impressive macro for a compact! You can get some relatively affordable led ring lights now.

The eye is a terrible sensor. It's nonlinear with ridiculous blank box processing.

What camera and lens? Like the photo.

OK so nothing to do with the human eye then or perception. Your definition of white light doesn't work in my view. You could have a mix of 400nm and 450nm photons, it sure as hell wouldn't be white. Your next point is therefore fundamentally flawed. If you're asking why is the sun always giving white light? Then that is really an artifact of the consistency of emission and evolution, for light bulbs it's consistency and design.