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Colors outside the spectrum

The blacklight itself only glows a mild purple for myself. It fails to illuminate dark objects. Ultraviolet reactive surfaces, like white cotton, will glow blue like a glow stick or glow in the dark material. Highlighter ink, depending on the type, will fluoresce appropriately. But the UV light itself is invisible. Are you saying you can see a shimmering "super-purple" on surfaces that do not fluoresce?

http://thespunkyscientist.blogspot.com/2011/04/lesson-of-unseen.html
Do you see patterns on flowers (in daylight of course, which has a UV component) that most people do not see?
 
Well I can't really say whether I see colors others don't, or if I just tend to notice the same colors to a greater extent. I've never closely observed flowers because I've had no reason to. They look "normal" to me. Some do seem to shimmer under the correct sunlight, but they look nothing like that link. The colors might just be too feint to distinguish any UV patterns. However looking at a yellow flower through my window at this moment, it just looks yellow. Though I guess it's possible that it's colors are too high in the ultraviolet spectrum, because I'm almost completely certain that deep purple flowers do shimmer.

But can say for sure I've seen blacklight posters that had a shimmering look to them under regular daylight. I remember commenting to a friend that his posters looked extremely trippy, and he told me to just wait until I saw them under a blacklight (which I never did).

Highlighters shimmer too, a lot. Same for colors of the sunset.

I'd always found this shimmering "color" cool, but never thought much of it.

Try looking at a super colorful sunset sometime, maybe while stoned, and see if you notice this shimmering effect I'm talking about.
 
Synaesthetes occasionally report "Martian colors," or colors that they only perceive as an output of synaesthetic processes which they have never seen in the "directly" perceived external environment. So, for example, a color-grapheme synaesthete might see a Martian color around the number 4, but only there and never anywhere else. Synaesthetic colors are thought to be evoked in reaction to conceptual feedback projecting itself onto perceptions AFTER the initial recognition. That is, the synaesthete's eyes receive the photons emitted from the number 4 on a sheet of paper, they recognize "4" as the concept of "4," and that unconscious recognition THEN immediately adds new information to whatever pattern of brain activity underlies the perception of "4," thereby creating a color aura around the numeral in perception. Because of this distinct addition to the perceptual process, it may be possible that they experience the perception of colors that they have never experienced originating from the external environment. Psychedelics seem to mimic synaesthetic processes. I have never seen "Martain" colors, but I have experience extra-spatial perception on psychedelics (which I previously had thought was impossible), so I don't doubt the possibility of perceiving "impossible" colors (especially since I can imagine the mechanism through which it might work).

EDIT: Regarding the person claiming to be able to see UV light on certain drugs: it would be pretty easy to test this by turning a black light on and off randomly 50 or so times in another well lit room (with the door open but with the black light out of direct sight) when everyone else agrees they cannot tell when the person controlling the switch has the light on or off. If it's true and you can perceive UV light when no one else can AND ONLY because of your use of certain drugs you'd be adding something fascinating to human knowledge. You are sort of obliged to do this now.
 
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I've seen a color inbetween black and white- grey with shading of a violet hue which iminated quite powerfully, was really cool but was on a bad trip of bud lol
 
psood0nym: Yeah, good explanation. The addition of extra information makes the represented data seem 'different', but it's not that it's a new colour (one that could be represented as a discrete range within the frequency spectrum of electromagnetic radiation i.e. light (photons), its more a new psychological data entity and so subjective experience. Global workspace theory makes it quite plain that if you have representational areas in the brain that are not normally connected but are then suddenly connected the apprehended experience will be the two seperate entities 'flavoured' with each other, in a way that feels particularly hard to explain because sense data from one modality isn't normally combined with the other. It may even be that the sense data is actually partially or fully interpreted by the other modality. Would be interesting to try and design an experiment to test that.
 
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Say, it occurs to me if you experience video-auditory (or vice-versa) synaethesia, you might see some interesting phenomena if you desynched the video and audio by more than 100ms - just watching a movie might be enough to test with, and delaying (or pre-playing, for lack of a better term I can think of) audio on most software players is trivial. Usually, if the audio track on a movie is desynchonised by more than 100ms, the two 'compete' more than fuse. Unsure if anyone has done this before (too lazy to search atm). If they have, it's probably been with natural synaethetes, not people on psychedelics.
 
psood0nym said:
EDIT: Regarding the person claiming to be able to see UV light on certain drugs: it would be pretty easy to test this by turning a black light on and off randomly 50 or so times in another well lit room (with the door open but with the black light out of direct sight) when everyone else agrees they cannot tell when the person controlling the switch has the light on or off. If it's true and you can perceive UV light when no one else can AND ONLY because of your use of certain drugs you'd be adding something fascinating to human knowledge. You are sort of obliged to do this now.
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Well there's a reason blacklights are used indoors where it's dark. Our eyes aren't very sensitive to deep violets, and I'm assuming this holds true for UV's, if anybody can see them. I'm sure the UV rays put out by the sun are much more powerful than the ones coming out of the blacklight, otherwise you could get a sunburn from them. The light normally considered "visible", especially closer to the red end of the spectrum (yellow, etc) certainly drown out the UV's in most cases, otherwise your socks would glow purple in the sun. Blacklights emit mostly dark violet light and not many UV's (I think) so the blacklight itself shouldn't look much different to someone who could see UV light.

I think (if I actually can see these colors) the only time UV's are visible to me is when there isn't much other light from the rest of the spectrum. Two such cases would be when the sun sets, allowing the atmosphere to refract more of the sun's light, and in an otherwise dark room, just lit by a light source emitting violet and UV rays.
 
^What about a tanning light versus fluorescent bulbs of the same or comparable footcandel intensity? Couldn't those be used for the same test? They give off UV light powerful enough to sunburn (a lot more UV relative to the intensity of the light relative to sunlight). They also give off visible light, but if the UV is powerful enough to sunburn I have to imagine it would show up to anyone capable of perceiving UV light in other conditions. It would be weird if visible light would drown out UV light in a way a person who could see it could only see it where there was low normally visible light, since some insects are capable of seeing UV light in normal sunlit conditions (certain flowers have colored UV patterns normally invisible to humans that distinguish them to pollinating insects that can perceive UV).
 
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psood0nym said:
^What about a tanning light versus fluorescent bulbs of the same or comparable footcandel intensity? Couldn't those be used for the same test? They give off UV light powerful enough to sunburn (a lot more UV relative to the intensity of the light relative to sunlight). They also give off visible light, but if the UV is powerful enough to sunburn I have to imagine it would show up to anyone capable of perceiving UV light in other conditions. It would be weird if visible light would drown out UV light in a way a person who could see it could only see it where there was low normally visible light, since some insects are capable of seeing UV light in normal sunlit conditions (certain flowers have colored UV patterns normally invisible to humans that distinguish them to pollinating insects that can perceive UV).
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Again, I've never looked through any other person's eyes so I don't really have a point of reference to compare to.. But tanning beds shimmer.

As far as insects seeing UV's in daylight.. Insect eyes are very insensitive to red light (they can't see it) and any colors that include red (orange, yellow, etc). Just as very dark purples (ie blacklights) can be difficult for most people to see, reds, oranges, and yellows are difficult for bees and other insects to see. Their range of vision is simply at a higher wavelength than ours.

Edit: Can't say for sure about tanning beds actually..
 
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I think the iridescent purples and electric blues that tryptamines invoke are pretty unique but I have seen very similar colours on some beetles, butterflies and peacock feathers, not quite an exact match but pretty darn close.
 
Interesting.. I have mild Asperger's Syndrome (never been officially diagnosed), and I hadn't made this connection until last night, but one of the odd characteristics of Asperger's is "excellent auditory and visual perception". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome#Other

I've always had an incredible ability to detect very slight changes in pitch (though I'm sure I'm partially deaf by now from listening to music too loud). But I had thought the visual perception portion didn't really apply to me. Maybe I'm not seeing any more than other people, but just noticing subtle differences that other people don't notice?
 
^Yeah, those are cool articles that reflect arguments behind a whole philosophical conception of color. They further support Goethe's argument in his "Theory of Colors" that the Newtonian conception of color as a wavelength of light is fallacious. For instance, there are purely black and white patterns that produce the subjective experience of color in perception without any external presence of the wavelength of light perceived (obviously dreams of color and memories of it also serve the argument, but to have external stimuli elicit perceptions of color in response to environmental stimuli when they contain no "objective" trace of it is far more philosophically cogent). I bring this up to underscore the point that when the title of the thread says "outside the spectrum," it's really referring to, "outside the phenomenological range normally experienced in reaction to external stimuli."
 
What do you mean with colours outside the spectrum?
Do you mean unusual colours?
Or colours not apparent in nature?

I dare you to invent a color that can't be made with colorpicker.... http://www.colorpicker.com/

For those who mentioned the "heat waves" or Infrared waves above a radiator/heat source:
The heat causes the air around to expand. This means the air next to the heat source has a lower density.
This difference in density can easily be seen with light.
Very much like you can see ether fumes rising from a jar.
 
^ Just because you can't imagine something, doesn't make it impossible ;)


The discussion about seeing UV light is quite interesting. Despite not having dedicated receptors for UV light (unlike many insects and birds), humans actually are able to see UV with the standard blue light receptors because their sensitivity extends slightly into the UV spectrum. However, under normal conditions the lens of the eye absorbs UV light before it can reach the retina, so the only people who should be able to perceive this are people with aphakia. I'm sure there would be some people whose lens lets some UV light through though, and they may be able to see it.
 
I understand that not all colours can be made from mixing light rays. But I should be able to make them from the basic colours, like all colours we know can be made.
If I would want to make new colours, I should have to find a whole new basic colour. In that case I have a new 'ingrediënt' in my colour mixer.

Whereas the UV-discussion goes; If our lens would not filter UV light (after the operation), shouldn't it massively damage our eyes?
I know from my experience as a welder that it bloody hurts...
 
^I think the idea may be that new colours can also be produced via internal modualtion of the sensory frequency by other patterns of information processing in the brain. This would explain the synaesthetic aspect to colour.
 
Divine Moments said:
^ Just because you can't imagine something, doesn't make it impossible ;)


The discussion about seeing UV light is quite interesting. Despite not having dedicated receptors for UV light (unlike many insects and birds), humans actually are able to see UV with the standard blue light receptors because their sensitivity extends slightly into the UV spectrum. However, under normal conditions the lens of the eye absorbs UV light before it can reach the retina, so the only people who should be able to perceive this are people with aphakia. I'm sure there would be some people whose lens lets some UV light through though, and they may be able to see it.
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Interesting point you bring up. I remember when I got LASIK eye surgery. They cut a flap in my cornea, and then lifted it up in order to burn it into proper formation with a laser. I saw some weird stuff when I had no lenses over my pupil. Here, grab some popcorn and watch this surgical video of the procedure. Doesn't that give you an appetite? Mmmm.
 
just my two cents, but I'm near sighted (I can only see stuff up close, if its far away it just turns into a blur) in one eye, and when i point my tv remote at it i can see the IR bulb illuminate, now, I'm no Tesla, but infra-red LED's shouldn't emit light under normal circumstances
 
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