Live data from Hacker News

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

experiment.com

1–10 of 61 posts

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

#5
What an interesting experiment. Could there be some basis, after all, to the urban legend that eating carrots improves night vision? Carotenes are "partly metabolized into Vitamin A" [1], but this experiment is skipping the precursors and going straight for what I assume are large and exclusive doses of Vitamin A. Can it really be that no one has tried this before?

Related and probably equally silly idea: I've always wanted a pair of sunglasses that could tune in to different EM spectra. How far are we from that? Night vision goggles are bulky because they need external power to do the frequency shifting, right?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot#Nutrition

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

#7
post #5

What an interesting experiment. Could there be some basis, after all, to the urban legend that eating carrots improves night vision? Carotenes are "partly metabolized into Vitamin A" [1], but this experiment is skipping the precursors and going straight for what I assume are large and exclusive doses of Vitamin A. Can it really be that no one has tried this before? Related and probably equally silly idea: I've always…

The urban legend was mostly due to its use in WWII, to explain why the allied night fighters were so good. The fighters actually used radar, which was still top secret.

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

#8
post #7
post #5

What an interesting experiment. Could there be some basis, after all, to the urban legend that eating carrots improves night vision? Carotenes are "partly metabolized into Vitamin A" [1], but this experiment is skipping the precursors and going straight for what I assume are large and exclusive doses of Vitamin A. Can it really be that no one has tried this before? Related and probably equally silly idea: I've always…

The urban legend was mostly due to its use in WWII, to explain why the allied night fighters were so good. The fighters actually used radar, which was still top secret.

Yeah it's a consideration, but the mere use of an existing old wive's tale doesn't completely discount the possibility of there being some truth to it anyway...
Post reply on HN