[Ultron]

It is good practice to exercise your brain and stretch your thoughts - it makes your central nervous system fitter and your imagination bigger, as well as your creativity. So let's put our imagination to use and do some 'stretching'...


Color is basically electro-magnetic radiation which our eyes can detect and our minds translates this information into how you personally understand color. Different colors mean different frequencies of light in the EM-spectrum.


A rainbow is a bundle of scattered light at different frequencies - in fact, it consists of EM-waves in all of the frequencies your eyes could possibly detect - a wide variety ranging from red to violet and all of the combinations in between.


Science has taught us about the EM spectrum and we know that this rainbow of ours - or rather, the light visible to us - is nothing more than a small part of this, spectrum... Today we know that 'beyond' light (violet) there is a frequency range called ultraviolet - we can feel it burning our skin while we sunbath, we have read about it in our books and we certainly know it exists - but we simply cannot 'see it with our own eyes'.
We also know of something called INFRAred, which is 'beyond' or rather, comes in before visible light (red). A frequency range in the EM spectrum which helps us prepare popcorn for the guests or our personal pleasure. Again, we know it exists, but there is no way we can see it and thus prove to our sub conscience that it is, in fact, very real.


But, what if we could see or 'perceive' these frequencies? What if our eyes were modified or evolved so they could see at least a few Hertz pass our current 'frequency limit' ? What 'color' would we see? How would we react if we were instantly given that ability?


No, I am not taking about being capable of seeing more 'colors' in terms of having a wider variety / palette / mix of existing colors. There have been cases of such humans which can see like, 6 or 10 million 'colors'. This has something to do with having 6 instead of the regular 4 'cones' in the eye or something.


No, I am talking about being able to see new colors, something that is neither red, yellow, blue or any combination of the three. What would this color look like? Can you even -imagine- something? Or are you limited to the same colored trains of thought every time this question hits your head?


Do you think it is even possible that there could be a color past the ones we can see? Do you think an alien could see gamma radiation or x-rays as a new, unknown-to-us color?


Note: On the reference to being able to 'see' x-rays - don't disregard them just because they penetrate a lot of things - maybe there is an alien race with lead-based receptors that can trap light at this frequency and perceive it with their... mind... as we do light in the 'visible' spectrum.

[ranch vermin]

all visible colours go in a dense cube, where you cant see the inside, but you could see it in slices.

adding a colour would be like adding a dimension.

That would be wierd making paintings like this,  because maybe it depends on how hot something is, what the colour of it would be.

[Korrelan]

Do you think it is even possible that there could be a color past the ones we can see? Do you think an alien could see gamma radiation or x-rays as a new, unknown-to-us color?

Yes.  Like you said… Colour is not a property of light. Colour is something that our brain does with light. The perceived colour of and object is just the frequency of light it doesn't absorb, and reflects back to our retina.  If a machine or alien has a vision system attuned to a wider frequency range it would be able to see ultraviolet for example; just like our space probes and  most insects do.

Ooooo… Perhaps that’s why in most UFO sightings the object changes colour… they are scanning using the full frequency spectrum; and we only see them as the frequency passes through our visible spectrum lol

Ooooooooo... Also perhaps that why we can't find 'Dark Matter' Hehe

[ivan.moony]

As far as I recall from biology, eye has millions of two distinct little sensors on the back-wall. Ones register light-dark and the others register colors. In the center of view color-sensors are more dense and on edges light-dark sensors are more dense. That is why when you can't see something in the dark, when you look slightly besides, you can better see the object you are inspecting in the corner of your vision.

Let me see Wikipedia, just a sec... nothing there, but my tricky memory says that little color sensors are actually of three kinds: red, green and blue (or cyan, magenta and yellow). If this is right then to see another color, all we need is a genetic mutation with more than three distinct color sensors.

They say dogs can see in black and white. Humans see in three-color palette. Maybe after thousands of new generations we would see something below red or above blue color too. Also I saw some documentaries with bees' and other bugs' vision. They see ultra-violet light too when they pick flowers, but don't ask me how.

Oh, there it is in the Wiki, under daltonism. Dark-light sensors are called rods and color sensors are called cones. It is all true.

Once I dreamed a new taste of something. It was sweet, but with a gradient of something else, unknown, like sour, but different. It was awesome.

[8pla.net]

In the words of Ranch [which I modified with a little mathematics]  ... "all visible colours go in a dense [3D] cube, where you cant see the inside, but you could see it in [2D] slices." and went on to say, "adding a colour would be like adding a dimension."

If I may loosely paraphrase a science documentary narrated by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, which I watched on TV.   Adding a dimension to the three dimensions of a cube may be quite common actually.  The fourth dimension is what we all know of as... Time. 

[ivan.moony]

Sound is also a wave, like a color. We think it has only one dimension, yet look at all patterns arising in music.

What if we could make a music with electromagnetic waves? What if we just map our favorite song into light waves? We could get a blend of harmonic colors, maybe changing through time. It would be a nice experiment, to map a mp3 stream into millions times faster video of changing color. But we don't have that much fast hardware...

[ranch vermin]

Ivan thats a cool idea I didnt think of.
Its boring,  but wavelets are a 3d view of sound over time. 

x frequency
y amplitude
z time

but what you said is interesting, because what if there is another way to look at it.

so if you look at the 1d line of hue,  and then you make the frequency of the sound the hue.

then amplitude takes 3 different parts of the spectrum, and then applies amplitude, and then you can do your ear like your eye?

[ivan.moony]

so, the idea would be to map frequency to hue and amplitude to lightness of color. But how to measure  frequency of a sound wave, especially if multiple waves interfere each with other? I think that experiment can't be done because we don't have a way to measure frequency.

[ivan.moony]

Maybe it could be done with digital generator of music like synthesizer?

By the way, there is a cool color scheme designer site. I suspect that picking pleasant colors has to do something with "harmonics" of waves. Harmonics by my intuition should be something like periods in which wave peaks match in the same time. Like if one has frequency 3 Hz and the other 4 Hz then harmony is over time 3 * 4 = 12 Hz. Any new wave added to the set should somehow match that harmony. But that is just my intuition, you'd have to google it to be sure.

[ranch vermin]

is that the beat frequency?

[ivan.moony]

is that the beat frequency?

I think sound wave frequency, but then value ranges from 20 Hz to 20000 Hz

But I think the same harmonics theory applies to beats too, why not

[Ultron]

Woah take it ease guys... I thought I was going to blow your minds and bump your imagination a bit, but you ended up taking claim over my topic (not to say that I am not proud)...


It is too much to digest - I hate it when I think up 20 different replies for each of your posts - I end up writing none of them and keeping them to myself. I suppose it is for the better - will keep bumping your imagination.


On a different note, I believe that if the few of you decide to read up some more detailed and accurate lessons / research on the topics of  frequency, specific-EM and neurobiology (receptors) you might actually end up with a working experiment and decent thesis. Why not?


Anyhow, Ranch's first photo was pretty much what I was (originally) hinting at. FIY, there have already been 'enhanced' rats which were given the ability to 'see' infrared - not through their eyes, though - yet through an electronic sensor whose data would be translated by a chip and transmitted directly to the brain... A true cyborg rat.


Someone said that different heat would mean different color - this does not mean infrared cannot be 'perceived' or 'translated' into a color without complicating things - this confuses you because the way we visualize different temperatures with IR cameras is by representing them with different colors - in reality, hotter just means more intense, much like we have 'intensity' or rather, brightness of the colors we can see regularly (visible spectrum). Yes, there are different frequencies in the infrared and those can, in fact be represented as different 'colors', but heat in the IR spectrum is basically brightness in the visible spectrum (analogy).


Heat does not directly affect the frequency of light (unless it induces physio-chemical changes in the material).


Bear in mind that all the colors you see are not real - they are just your (or rather, 'our') imagination - an efficient way to represent in simple terms the various frequencies our receptors (eyes) register. So if your mind invented all of these colors, why couldn't it invent a few more? Is there even a limit?


Note that it is impossible to make a model of this - unless we modify our very receptors or turn ourselves into cyborgs, there is no way this would get out of theoretical phase. Even if a 'meta'-human were to begin seeing new colors, there is absolutely no way he can show us or explains to us how it looks. This is much like attempting to describe colors to a person born blind.


This is all the sugar and philosophy I am giving you guys - I'l try to stay away from the math as I had enough of it these past two weeks. Keep up the good discussion... Cheers!

[Art]

... But how to measure  frequency of a sound wave, especially if multiple waves interfere each with other? I think that experiment can't be done because we don't have a way to measure frequency.

I think frequency is actually measured by way of Hertz or Hz. It's basically the number of cycles per second that the object in question vibrates, like a piano / musical note / sound / noise, etc.

Colors have wavelengths of measurable values.

To say that we can't measure something is just...unnatural, because that is what we've done for thousands of years (and then some, but who's measuring?). 

[Art]

OK...I had to come back here and post this article found on another site I was visiting.

Pretty innovative and is in line with our sort of bending topic discussion with talk of waves and frequencies.

How a Low Freq. Fire Extinguisher? Yeah!
http://www.chonday.com/Videos/sounfriewav3

[Ultron]

I noticed that acoustic fire extinguisher some day ago...


Pretty interesting but I find it's application is questionably. When it comes to protection - prevention and cleaning up after natural disasters, such as forest fires (or any other fire of a larger magnitude for that matter) we should take into consideration the magnitude of these problems...


We should think much bigger - an efficient device that could cancel out a whole forest fire... Maybe some high-frequency EM wave that will excite the oxygen in the air above say, an acre of land, so it cannot join with other elements (oxidize them - ignite) and thus disable any burning and flames. This would be like suddenly placing all this flammable material in a vacuum.


Of course, this would not be practical in every case, since ionized air can be toxic and even lethal to humans. Maybe ionization was a bad idea, but I am hinting towards a similar process that would reduce the reactivity of the oxygen in the air. Maybe release a non-toxic chemical or some sort of sub-atomic particle that would 'saturate' all or at least most of the available oxygen.


Note that ionized air (the ionosphere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere) blocks of some radio-frequencies, but I believe for a few minutes (until the flammable material cools) it would pose a problem. Also note that, oxygen in the form of trioxygene (O3) might form as a result of such 'extinguishers', which is no good. It is also very unstable (as a molecule) and breaks down to O2 (at given pressures).
O3 makes up the Ozone layer of our planet - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone ... O3 is very rare in the troposphere, this is because, as said previously, it breaks down to O2 in the lower layers.


The purpose of this reply was to point out some facts (interesting or not) and some similar concepts to the project Art shared with us - what problems could arise, criteria, side effects etc. Now, if nobody else minds, I believe we should not waste a good topic and get back to discussing how to imagine the unimaginable. Or, is it really unimaginable?