this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 27 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Ahem... maybe new players forgot this, but humans have been bioluminescent since the oxygenic respiration patch ages ago.

https://www.sciencealert.com/you-can-t-see-it-but-humans-actually-glow-in-visible-light

[–] reptar@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I want to know at what wavelengths. Did I miss it?

It bugs me that they say 'it's not infrared - it's photons!' (paraphrasing).

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Its not clear to me either, but since they said visible, my guesses would be 680 nanometers or 490 nanometers, because, well, hydrogen.

[–] reptar@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

The paper (which is very short) said 500-700nm and referenced an older (1997) paper that reported on a bunch of UV and visual emitting living systems. I looked there but didn't pinpoint an answer. It did mention that the emission doesn't usually have sharp peaks (as the reason they trade spectral resolution for sensitivity). It seems like the emitting molecules are large, so it's probably pretty broad.

Anyway... that made me nice and sleepy.