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Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

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Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Snopes has this: http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp "While carrots are a good source of vitamin A (which is important for healthy eyesight, skin, growth, and resisting infection), eating them won't improve vision. The purported link between carrots and markedly acute vision is a matter of lore, not of science. And it's lore of the deliberately manufactured type. "In World War II, Britain's air…

> I've been known to employ somewhat similar tactics myself. How can we be sure?

The context involved a disagreement with someone else which grew to include a legal action.

Turns out I'd managed to access a significant trove of documents, admissible in court, strongly supporting my side's case.

I was in communication with several entities I suspected were communicating (directly or otherwise) with the opposing side, and while it was useful to communicate that we had significant information, detailing just what it was, or how it was obtained, was somewhat less so.

So the cover story we worked out was that we had deep connections to the black-hat online hacker community who were able to pull all kinds of random information out of the Net. Playing up the whole hacker mistique thing.

One consequence of this was opposing counsel strongly suspecting that the evidence we introduced wasn't admissible. They were rather surprised when it turned out to be very admissible. The fact that the opposing side's witnesses were shown to be markedly less than credible didn't help their side (and may have sabotaged their own case).

It was a vaguely satisfying aspect of an otherwise fairly unpleasant episode.

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that most of the jokes tend to revolve around becoming some sort of super hero. The stranger thing is that no one has pondered the potential cons having the ability to see beyond the spectrum. Or maybe I don't read enough comic books?

I read something on imgur or here some days ago from a guy who could "see" some UV. He had to wear polarizing glasses because of headaches and had developed a fascination for violet objects.

By any chance, do you have a link to them?

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#33
post #21
post #20

> near-infrared So, still red then?

No. "near-infrared" isn't a red color shade, in fact it's not normally visible at all. Near-infrared is what your media remote uses to control your TV and audio system. You really cannot see it.

Well, you can see the LED blinking if you look at it straight on, but I guess it may bleed into the visible spectrum.

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#34

This could certainly be possible. Jay Neitz did experiments on monkeys to cure colorblindness using gene therapy and was successful. [1] He has said that perhaps one day humans can have genes for more color receptors added to be able to see more colors as some birds do. 1. http://www.neitzvision.com/content/genetherapy.html

That's a completely different mechanism than is being proposed here.

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read something on imgur or here some days ago from a guy who could "see" some UV. He had to wear polarizing glasses because of headaches and had developed a fascination for violet objects.

By any chance, do you have a link to them?

It took some google search terms tweaking[0] but I found it: http://imgur.com/owXEe41 (sfw).

> I have 20/11 vision with a mutation that causes me to see a lower-band of UV. It overstimulates my ocular processing and causes migraines. I wear amber glass eye glasses with +.02 diopiter lenses to help reduce this problem. Because of this, I have an absolute obsession and facination with purple objects.

I remember the original poster participated in the comment section but (sigh) I don't know how to get there.

[0] site:imgur.com comment uv glasses headache

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#36
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. "near-infrared" isn't a red color shade, in fact it's not normally visible at all. Near-infrared is what your media remote uses to control your TV and audio system. You really cannot see it.

Well, you can see the LED blinking if you look at it straight on, but I guess it may bleed into the visible spectrum.

That's pretty fascinating if you can see it. I just tried with three different remotes - and alas, I can't see a thing, no matter how hard I try.

All three give very bright flash when viewed via my Mac's camera (just launching Facetime with no call and pointing the remote to it).

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#37
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can see the LED blinking if you look at it straight on, but I guess it may bleed into the visible spectrum.

That's pretty fascinating if you can see it. I just tried with three different remotes - and alas, I can't see a thing, no matter how hard I try. All three give very bright flash when viewed via my Mac's camera (just launching Facetime with no call and pointing the remote to it).

Huh. No, I can definitely see it. I just looked at my HTC One's IR transmitter for the first time, without knowing where the LED is. It's pretty clearly on the right side of the lock button, just under it.

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#38
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty fascinating if you can see it. I just tried with three different remotes - and alas, I can't see a thing, no matter how hard I try. All three give very bright flash when viewed via my Mac's camera (just launching Facetime with no call and pointing the remote to it).

Huh. No, I can definitely see it. I just looked at my HTC One's IR transmitter for the first time, without knowing where the LED is. It's pretty clearly on the right side of the lock button, just under it.

I don't have HTC One to make a comparison - but if you have some "vanilla" remotes laying around and can see the IR LEDs blink in all of them when active - then yeah, probably you do see into the IR and I don't!

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#39
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. No, I can definitely see it. I just looked at my HTC One's IR transmitter for the first time, without knowing where the LED is. It's pretty clearly on the right side of the lock button, just under it.

I don't have HTC One to make a comparison - but if you have some "vanilla" remotes laying around and can see the IR LEDs blink in all of them when active - then yeah, probably you do see into the IR and I don't!

Yeah, I just tried both TV remotes (one is just a Samsung remote). I can see all of them, but it's only a faint glow. Try it in a dark room, you should be able to see it.

Re: Biologically extending human vision into the near-infrared: Initial success

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that most of the jokes tend to revolve around becoming some sort of super hero. The stranger thing is that no one has pondered the potential cons having the ability to see beyond the spectrum. Or maybe I don't read enough comic books?

I read something on imgur or here some days ago from a guy who could "see" some UV. He had to wear polarizing glasses because of headaches and had developed a fascination for violet objects.

Apparently the human retina can detect some UV wavelengths, but the UV light is normally blocked by the lens and does not reach the retina.

Some patients who have had replacement artificial lenses develop the ability to see some portion of the UV spectrum. My mum now has this - she had lens replacement last year and following that she mentioned that a lot of things appeared more purple in some circumstances - my brother did some research and found out about the UV detection.

Wikipedia has some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphakia

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