Would it be possible to sustain life without electromagnetic waves?

[TheLoneWriter]

I'm not the brightest bulb in the box so I figured I would ask some of you for help on this. I'm curious- would we as humans be able to survive without electromagnetic waves?

In the electromagnetic spectrum we have ultraviolet and infrared rays which are (unless I am misunderstanding this completely) two ways that sun energy travels to earth. If we took away UV and infrared rays, what would the effects be? Would plants still be able to grow?

Also, visible light is one of the waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. Without it, would we only be able to see in black and white or would we not be able to see at all?

Sorry if these are silly questions, I just have the "curious" itch haha.

Thanks so much!

[Przemyslaw.Gruchala]

I'm curious- would we as humans be able to survive without electromagnetic waves?

 

The smartest one. Maybe. If we would have enough time to prepare for Sun no longer giving energy..

 

 

Would plants still be able to grow?

 

Do plants grow in hothouses? Yes they do. But we would have to give them other sources of energy..

 

Also, visible light is one of the waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. Without it, would we only be able to see in black and white or would we not be able to see at all?

 

We have artificial light sources anyway.

[swansont]

No EM radiation means no light of any sort. Depending on how you mean this, it could also means no EM interactions between anything.

 

No, we would not survive.

[juanrga]

To add to swansont reply, without EM could not even exist atoms!

[md65536]

Well, the questions only make a little bit of sense depending on interpretation.

 

The EM spectrum is a continuous range of wavelengths, and the sun emits EM radiation along a wide range including visible. So UV, IR, and visible aren't "different ways"; they're all light just at different wavelenths. Also, visible isn't "one of the waves" but a range of wavelengths. To the eye it could be considered two---I think---overlapping ranges that are responded to differently by 2 different types of cone in the eye.

 

If you remove visible light then you'd see no light. However we can still detect other frequencies, eg. you can feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin. Different animals have different ranges of visible light and can see wavelengths that we can't. I think different people also have varying sensitivity to different wavelengths.

 

I guess plants also have different light requirements, eg. shade vs. direct sunlight. I imagine at least some can survive on visible light alone.

 

 

 

Apart from whether atoms could exist and what other physics wouldn't work, and imagining that everything is completely dark on all wavelengths, then I think the entire Earth would be molten as there would be no cooling of its surface through radiating energy into space, which is how its crust formed in the first place.

Edited March 30, 2013 by md65536

[md65536]

Error in my previous post: The thing about "two" ranges is something about how the brain processes color, not how the eye senses it, as there are usually 4 different overlapping ranges detected by 3 types of cone and 1 type of rod cell in the eye.

[King Thando Mathe]

Our bodies also have an electromagnetic feild around it