Darkness Defined.

[quickquestion]

Reading through some of Relative (molecule's) posts, he inspired me to make a clear, scientific definition of what darkness and light is. Basically, much of what Relative was saying hurt my brain and didn't make much sense to me. But if he still checks backs on these boards, maybe he can read my ideas of what dark and light is.

 

Darkness, is basically, a lack of energy. A stillness.

Okay, let me rewrite this. Human darkness, is when the energy frequency is out of bounds (<4000 angstroms>8000).

 

 

Also, to Bender. Giving a robot a color sensor will not say whether or not it can see in color. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness If I am browsing a black and white science document that tells me the wavelength of each color, I would not be seeing in color, only the numbers (an abstract reference of what color is.) Similarly, a simple robot would mostly likely know the numbers of colors, but not see in color. Creating a sentient robot is very dangerous if you do not know the secrets of consciousness...you could create a very unhappy being...imagine creating a person that never feels happiness. Or if it's circuits were wired in such a way where it always felt pain, but it was programmed in such a way that it would not say it was not in pain when it was.

 

Light is like a vibration on the ocean, a wind. We have evolved to feel this wind as different colors. Simply by changing the width of the sine waves, our Conscious perceives it as a kind of color.

 

Basically, the sun is an entity that generates waves outward from where it is.

 

So when you think about it like this, "color" doesn't really exist without Consciousness converting the sine waves into "Consciousness's Color". The "color" changes when the width of the sine waves changes. Just like the taste of grape doesn't really exist as a mathematical quantity, consciousness converts the mathematical shape and pattern of activated neurons into the taste of grape - the hard problem of qualia.

 

I wonder if Relative was trying to say something along these lines, but in a very inarticulate way.

Edited April 9, 2017 by quickquestion

[Sensei]

Photons have property called energy.

Energy of single photon is:

E=h*f

where h is Planck constant 6.62607*10^-34 J*s

and f is frequency in Hz (s^-1).

 

Frequency has equation

f=c/wavelength

or

f=1/T

 

Therefor we can substitute:

E=h*c/wavelength

E=h/T

 

Photons with small energy are called radio waves,

photons with slightly higher energy are called microwaves,

then infrared photons (IR), then visible light, then ultraviolet (UV), then x-rays and gamma ray photons, with the largest energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum

 

Matter (or antimatter) is emitting photons in the all directions (inverse-square law),

energies of these photons correspond to temperature of object.

It's called black body radiation.

 

Even if human don't see IR or microwaves, objects are emitting them, and electronic devices can detect them and record on video.

f.e.

 

Some mediums/materials are transparent to one photon energy/frequency/wavelength, and opaque to other photon energy.

 

Photons can be also reflected, refracted or absorbed by medium.

 

X-rays photons are emitted by excited atom electrons.

Gamma photons are emitted by f.e. excited atom nucleus, during annihilation, during decay of unstable particles and isotopes.

Edited April 9, 2017 by Sensei

[swansont]

Darkness, is basically, a lack of energy. A stillness.

 

 

Quantum mechanics tells us there is energy even when there are no photons. So that's not going to work.

[quickquestion]

 

 

Quantum mechanics tells us there is energy even when there are no photons. So that's not going to work.

By energy do you mean a couple of molecules floating out in a vacuum, very low energy, or do you mean a potential for energy? How much energy are we talking about here?

 

Even if human don't see IR or microwaves, objects are emitting them, and electronic devices can detect them and record on video.

 

 

Yes but my point was colors don't exist without Consciousness. A machine can only detect the wavelengths of photons as word-number, it cannot see the color red.

 

At a fundamental level, Relative was not explaining things well. Basically, how I would explain it, is that the Sun is an energy emitter, and that we as Beings sense the Energy emitted from the Sun. So our eyes are Energy Sensors. So when Relative said "All is darkness" it doesn't make any sense. Because there is Energy in the universe, and we perceive this energy as the opposite of darkness.

[Bender]

Yes but my point was colors don't exist without Consciousness. A machine can only detect the wavelengths of photons as word-number, it cannot see the color red.

Sure it can. If it has a colour sensor, it can see colours. Consciousness is a fuzzy concept anyway. I have yet to see anyone give a property of consciousness that I cannot give a computer.

At a fundamental level, Relative was not explaining things well. Basically, how I would explain it, is that the Sun is an energy emitter, and that we as Beings sense the Energy emitted from the Sun. So our eyes are Energy Sensors. So when Relative said "All is darkness" it doesn't make any sense. Because there is Energy in the universe, and we perceive this energy as the opposite of darkness.

Not quite. There is plenty of energy we cannot perceive. In fact our eyes can detect only a really tiny part of the elektromagnetic spectrum.

[Sriman Dutta]

Our human brains can perceive electromagnetic waves of wavelengths 4000 to 8000 angstroms. That's the visible spectrum. And each particular wavelength has its own unique effect on our visual perception.

It is important to understand how our brain sees our world. It is a known fact that the sunlight is polychromatic in nature and is generally a mixture of all colours. When this sunlight is incident on an object of a particular colour, then that object absorbs all other colours but reflects its own colour. As an example, the grass absorbs all colours but reflects green.

On the other hand, we perceive darkness due to lack of visible light. Example is a shadow casted by an opaque body. However, it must be kept in mind that what we perceive darkness may not be completely devoid of electromagnetic rays. Visible light may not be present, but infrared rays or rays of higher frequencies like X ray or ultraviolet rays may be present.

[swansont]

By energy do you mean a couple of molecules floating out in a vacuum, very low energy, or do you mean a potential for energy? How much energy are we talking about here?

 

Zero-point energy. Hard to say how much there is - one of the unanswered questions. But we know it's not zero.

[koti]

Darkness is a property of human or other animal sight and has nothing to do with physics. In physics the closest thing to darkness would be "lack of energy" but it's just silly to correlate the two like that. Frankly I don't understand why this topic is in the physics forum.

As for color; Color is perceived differently by individuals based on experience. Color perception is a personal thing and I guarantee that everyone in this thread sees colors differently. Does it have anything to do with conciousness? (whatever that is) - not really. Its just that our brains correlate names of colors to whats out there in different ways. Like a canon camera sensor registers different colors from a nikon camera sensor. Certainly no conciousness there.

Edited April 10, 2017 by koti

[swansont]

Darkness is a property of human or other animal sight and has nothing to do with physics. In physics the closest thing to darkness would be "lack of energy" but it's just silly to correlate the two like that. Frankly I don't understand why this topic is in the physics forum.

 

 

 

I disagree. Darkness is a relative lack of photons.

[koti]

 

 

I disagree. Darkness is a relative lack of photons.

Not for a bat.

 

But I do agree with you ofcourse. Your definition is great in human sense but not in physics sense I think. It's just that "darkness" is a "thing" which might mean different things depending on circumstances - not like properties used in physics like force or velocity.

Edited April 10, 2017 by koti

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

 

Discussion relating to consciousness and its role in defining color has been split

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/104776-consciousness-and-color-split-from-darkness-defined/