Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Wait, so what does it look like when viewed with filters that limit it to the visible spectrum?


It depends. If you point it at Mars, it would be reddish. If you point it at other things, they would be different colors depending on their chemical makeup. The problem is that most of the radiation given off by objects is not in the visible spectrum, so the images would be much less vibrant. The would generally be dull gray blobs.


The correct solution, of course, is not to start shipping out dull grey blobs to journalists, but to upgrade the human eye.

(I'm keeping a close eye (hurr hurr) on the efforts to provide artificial retinas. Progress may not seem like it's going that quickly, but there's no reason to think that they won't hit parity with human eyes (in most ways anyhow), then zip right on past parity.)


If by "filters" you mean digital processing, yes - but there is no optical (glass) filter that will allow you to see infrared light.

It's more like thermal imaging - different (invisible) wavelengths of radiation are mapped to different visible colors. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&#...

Does the world "really" look like that? No. Does the color represent some real-world property? Yes. It's not just hand-coloring in Photoshop.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: