Human vision and the electromagnetic spectrum?

Question

If the human eye could perceive the entire EM spectrum as opposed to just visible light, what would the world look like and would our brains be able to make sense of what we were seeing?

Answer 1

The brain would not be able to comprehend that large amount of information perceived!

Actually this question is purely Hypothetical, considering the basis (interconversion of cis-retinol and trans-retinol) of an organic eye.

Even if it were possible for an electronic eye, it would be useless to see all the EM radiation simultaneously!
Consider this case....you are observing all radiations simultaneously and you observe a thick metal sheet through incident γ-rays and microwaves.
You will see nothing due to γ-rays and a shining metal plate due to microwaves.
Although I would like to add that microwaves would lead to much poorer resolution.
Now you can imagine how its useless to perceive them simultaneously!

But it would be a prized asset for someone (or something....maybe a robot)if and only if some sense can be made out of the data.

Answer 2

My guess is that everything would be just a blinding mass of light (I mean all the spectrum here, not just visible light as we know it).
Most objects give off a faint microwave glimmer at room temperature, the sky emits microwave radiation, visible light, radio waves, gamma radiation, infra-red and ultra-violet all come in from the sun, the night sky is completely covered by an almost constant microwave background radiation originating from the big bang, and of course as people have already said there's an enormous number of radio transmitters covering the entire globe. We would never be able to find a dark spot again !
Interestingly, as someone has already said, if we could see the entire spectrum and some of it was no use to us, presumeably nature would filter the ability out over time. Maybe that has happened already and we're just left with the useful bits, i.e. the visible bits.

It would be useful to be able to see the entire spectrum selectively, i.e. a bit at a time, but I would imagine the world would look totally alien to us in for example, ultra-violet or gamma ray frequencies.

Answer 3

Good question. There are animals which can see into the infrared or ultraviolet. It gives them advantages in certain situations. But consider the kind of information we get from vision. Extending the visible spectrum wouldn't give much improvement. It would give some, if we could selectively. Superman supposedly could see through a wall if he wanted to, but if he never saw the wall, that would be a problem. So we could get some small benefit by seeing shorter wavelengths.

But at longer wavelengths, you lose resolution. You could 'see' radio waves from thousands of radio transmitters, but you couldn't even tell where they were coming from. You could just tell that it was there, and it's always there.

Our brains could adapt to make use of some added information, but the long wavelengths don't add information. If our eyes saw it, our brains would develop a way to ignore it, and natural selection would probably let even the capability to fade away.

Answer 4

I'm not quite sure what the world would look like, I imagine it would be quite confusing. We would be able to see everything from radio waves all the way up to gamma rays, I think our brains would have an extremely difficult time making sense of what we would be seeing.

An example would be like seeing a person standing in front of you while you're wearing a single eye piece that can perceive thermal imaging with different colors representing different temperatures and then having nothing covering your other eye and trying to look at them with both eyes at the same time. It would be extremely difficult and very taxing on your brain, most likely resulting in a headache or having to remove the eye piece.

Now imagine trying that with seeing Radio waves, micro waves, infrared (heat), visible light, UV, x-ray, and then gamma rays all overlapping together and you get the idea...

Answer 5

The light ray waves start from a high frequency to a low frequency but we can only see one part, in the brakets.
Radio magnetice, micro waves, Infa-red,(visable light), Ultra sonic, x-ray, gamma rays.
If we could see all these it would be like seeing things normal, In heat sensor, In an x-ray, Like a radar all at once and even more confusing.

Answer 6

if human eye could perceive the entire EM spectrum, then, I understand that our brainswould be able to make senseof what we were seeing.

Answer 7

Also remember that Particle-Wave Duality tells us that everything has wave properties, so if your eye could observe the ENTIRE spectrum, you'd also be observing people as "light."

Answer 8

It would be total noise; imagine being able to see all the radio and TV stations and all the static and cell phone signals. It would be impossible to process