FWD [forteana] Re: Seeing infra-red

From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 22:16:59 MDT

  • Next message: Spike: "RE: TMS...the truth is out there..."

    Barbara wrote:
    > The military did something similar back in WWII; they were
    > Trying to get soldiers to see in the infrared spectrum (natively).

    Barbara Babbles;
    I think you're thinking about the "official" explaination for the
    accuracy of allied night bombing raids over Germany, which was that the
    pilots ate a lot of carrots (supposedly this improves night vision).
    However this was disinformation to hide the allied use of on-board Radar
    and directional beacons.
    ---------------
    May also be a confusion with the use by the miltary during WW2 of old people
    who'd had their lenses removed for cataract operations.
    This allows you to see into the near ultra-violet (to which the lens of the
    eye is opaque).
    They could then see the UV lights used by German agents to signal acorss the
    channel, which were invisible to the naked eye.

    -------------------------

    Roy asked:
    Cool, I never realised I could do that (I've had cataract ops and so
    don't have any lenses in my eyes). Any ideas how I could test this
    facility (preferably in a non-sight-damaging way?
    ________

    Go birding. Many birds that look dull to human eyes actually have bright UV
    coloring. Starlings, blue tits and zebra finches are the examples that seem
    to come up the most in my cursory web-search. You might want to take a look
    at this reference:
    Burkhardt, D. (1989). "UV Vision: A Bird's Eye View of Feathers", _J. Comp.
    Physiol. A_, 164:787-796.

    ------------------------

    Roy asked:
    Cool, I never realised I could do that (I've had cataract ops and so
    don't have any lenses in my eyes). Any ideas how I could test this
    facility (preferably in a non-sight-damaging way?
    ----------------------------------------
    Tricky. Most UV lights also emit visible light (so that you can tell that
    they are on).
    You'd either need to find a UV light which emits no visible light, or find a
    filter which blocks visible light, but lets UV through (quartz-based, I
    guess, since glass blocks UV).
    As I recall, UV looks white to the human eye; shame, one might have hoped
    for an exotic ultra-mondane colour.

    -- 
    Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
         Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com >
    Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
    Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB *
          U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program
    ------------
    Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List
       TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans,
    Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 26 2003 - 22:27:28 MDT