Was the universe "dark" before the eyesight

[vitttorrio]

Hello! The most of the living population of our planet can observe light and colors, right? But what was light before there was life in the universe? How can we look on the earlier universe when you couldnt feel, look or hear anything. Is it just like it was waiting till life would be created, or is it more complex than that and like the infinity just inconceivable for us?

[swansont]

Light takes time to travel. Light from far away can be billions of years old, before there was any life. 

Light’s properties are not dependent on there being life.

[Sensei]

To paraphrase, if you turn on a light bulb in a room and go outside, meaning no one witnesses the light in your house, there is no light in your house?

[Phi for All]

Earth species evolved sensors that detect various phenomena that helped them survive to reproduce, such as eyes that sense light, and ears and skin that can determine various sound vibrations or changes in temperature. All these stimuli existed first, and Earth life adapted to sense them to varying degrees.

Think of it this way, there are parts of the light spectrum most humans can't see, like ultraviolet. UV light still exists even if we can't see it. 

[Domobran7]

48 minutes ago, vitttorrio said:

Hello! The most of the living population of our planet can observe light and colors, right? But what was light before there was life in the universe? How can we look on the earlier universe when you couldnt feel, look or hear anything. Is it just like it was waiting till life would be created, or is it more complex than that and like the infinity just inconceivable for us?

Not sure if I understand what you are asking but... we evolved senses to make use of the inputs in our surroundings. Human senses are sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. All of this is based on inputs - light, sound, matter - that had existed long before there were any humans, or indeed any life. Light was there, there just wasn't anybody to observe it.

And this has implications for science.

Light has a finite speed (cca 300 000 km/s). This means that watching the world around us is already a type of time travel - even if it is a fraction of a second, we never actually see things at the exact moment they are happening at. And at interstellar distances, this delay is significant.

What this means is that light is essentially a "message in a bottle" from our past. If we watch at a galaxy that is a billion light years away, we see it as it was a billion years ago. And from that, we can extrapolate what our own galaxy was like a billion years ago.

One of these answers is probably to a question you hadn't asked, but...

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, vitttorrio said:

Hello! The most of the living population of our planet can observe light and colors, right? But what was light before there was life in the universe? How can we look on the earlier universe when you couldnt feel, look or hear anything. Is it just like it was waiting till life would be created, or is it more complex than that and like the infinity just inconceivable for us?

Your mistake is in treating light as if it is a perception, like colour. It isn't. Light, or to be more general, electromagnetic radiation, is a physical thing. 

[Phi for All]

24 minutes ago, Domobran7 said:

Human senses are sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.

Touch needs to be divided into more parts, imo. With touch we know when we make contact with an object, whether it's soft or hard or sharp or wet (textures) or hot or cold (temperature) or vibrating. We associate pain with touch receptors as well, and even emotions like compassion can be detected and even delivered through touch, so I think these are all separate senses, or deserve to be.

And where does proprioception fit in? It's the sense that lets us know where we are in relation to the space around us, so we don't have to watch each stair as we climb them, or so we can touch our nose with our fingertip when our eyes are closed.

We also have a sense of balance that seems caught up with tubes in our ears, but has nothing to do with hearing. 

I've heard some claim we have a sense of proximity, like how close we're standing to a wall, but I think that's a combination of feeling air pressure against the skin and hearing the difference sound makes when it's being reflected off a close surface.

And of course, there's the fact that we don't sense anything with our receptors directly. It's all filtered and interpreted by the brain, which is so fast that it often predicts what you're supposed to be seeing based on past experiences before the light actually reaches your eyes.

I hope that's not too off-topic for the opening post, but I think understanding how the senses evolved to work is important to their questions.

[Genady]

2 hours ago, vitttorrio said:

Hello! The most of the living population of our planet can observe light and colors, right? But what was light before there was life in the universe? How can we look on the earlier universe when you couldnt feel, look or hear anything. Is it just like it was waiting till life would be created, or is it more complex than that and like the infinity just inconceivable for us?

One part of the OP that was not addressed yet, I think, is the mention of "infinity ... inconceivable for us." I agree that infinity is a complex notion, but I disagree that it is inconceivable. Though, like in other parts of the OP, it is not clear what they mean.

[Domobran7]

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Touch needs to be divided into more parts, imo. With touch we know when we make contact with an object, whether it's soft or hard or sharp or wet (textures) or hot or cold (temperature) or vibrating. We associate pain with touch receptors as well, and even emotions like compassion can be detected and even delivered through touch, so I think these are all separate senses, or deserve to be.

 

All of these are merely different functions of touch, because ultimately all of these use the same receptors. Just like sight relies on eyes only, but you can see colour, size, shape, distance, motions, velocity and so on.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

And where does proprioception fit in? It's the sense that lets us know where we are in relation to the space around us, so we don't have to watch each stair as we climb them, or so we can touch our nose with our fingertip when our eyes are closed.

We also have a sense of balance that seems caught up with tubes in our ears, but has nothing to do with hearing. 

I do not think it fits in a sense as in "something that allows us to sense the world around us". Rather it would be a system that allows us to actually utilize input from our senses.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I've heard some claim we have a sense of proximity, like how close we're standing to a wall, but I think that's a combination of feeling air pressure against the skin and hearing the difference sound makes when it's being reflected off a close surface.

 

Precisely.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

And of course, there's the fact that we don't sense anything with our receptors directly. It's all filtered and interpreted by the brain, which is so fast that it often predicts what you're supposed to be seeing based on past experiences before the light actually reaches your eyes.

 

Well, reality really is an illusion created by our brain. But things that illusion is based on are real enough.

[swansont]

23 hours ago, Domobran7 said:

Human senses are sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.

https://theconversation.com/5-senses-in-fact-architects-say-there-are-7-ways-we-perceive-our-environments-193179

Some think there are more 

[motalebhossainseo]

science?