Starship Asterisk*

Recently, watching the trailer for the movie Lucy, I was reminded once again that few people have any idea how cell phones work. In the trailer, she is somehow able to view transmissions to and from cellphones and while it was laughably wrong, showing countless ribbons gently undulating up into space, the concept of cellphone vision has interested me ever since I realized it's all light and the silly spectacle got me thinking about it again. Radio vision, too, but cellphone vision I think might be more interesting because the cell phones are all glowing and in such wide use. The world is also a bit more opaque in microwaves, right? So you could "see" some things other than just the lights.

The cellular world I imagine as being very ghostly. Many things are transparent or very faintly seen. The microwave oven on your kitchen counter is quite opaque. I presume metals are also opaque. Concrete? I know I lose reception under a bridge, so it's probably pretty thick looking, something like looking through murky water. Cell towers are bright beacons of light flooding every corner of the city in every direction like an endless parking lot at night. Cell phones themselves flicker on and off when idle and constantly while in use. Looking across the city with microwave vision, they might look like thousands of fireflies resting on various surfaces and floating within pockets. Looking down at the Earth, it too is a little transparent. Not too far, though. It's probably dark but the sky might be even darker. Heck, everything might be too dark to see except for the cell towers and the cell phones. Hmm.

I imagine all MW light sources would be bright, in line with their wattage, and would illuminate most objects they shine on. I guess this illumination would appear fuzzy though, with noticeable diffraction patterns around the edges. I wonder what the colours of MWs might be? It is probably delving into the realm of metaphysics.

I'm unsure if it would illuminate things enough to make them visible to any detector. I guess this must be pretty hard to build or it would have been done by now. I also imagine it would be pretty blurry due to a lack of resolution but I hadn't thought about the diffraction patterns. You could assign color easily if you took two or more sets of data containing different wavelengths just like astronomical imagery. Anyone using lower frequency microwaves could be assigned to the red channel and anyone using higher frequencies blue. It might look psychedelic or if the sources are all close enough and covering the same area it might just blend together and look like various dull grays in color.

I'm talking about new colours that no human has ever seen before. It's a strange concept.

You are talking about a construct created by the human mind. If you wanted, you could name all colors wavelength x, which is something that happens often enough in science since the names we have assigned to certain wavelengths are so imprecise.

geckzilla wrote:You are talking about a construct created by the human mind. If you wanted, you could name all colors wavelength x, which is something that happens often enough in science since the names we have assigned to certain wavelengths are so imprecise.

Exactly. But imagining our eyes and brains could see MW light (as opposed to using artificial sensors to map the light into something we can see in the red-violet spectrum) it might be rather pretty.

Back to the real world, Microwave Satellite Imagery is currently used to detect atmospheric water vapour and rainfall across the planet. I don't think it detects much else from up there.

Maybe in some future we will know how our brains work well enough so that if you want, you *can* see new colors by simply altering how we perceive already visible colors. Although, if it hasn't happened already by accident of someone experimenting with magic mushrooms or whatever, maybe it's not possible.

Hi, Beyond's ref. over in the Mashup topic drew me here like a moth* to a flame

I've not seen Lucy, but
you said " , blurry due to a lack of resolution, "
Yes that is the main problem, cell phones are using radio/tv type frequencies with a wavelength of the order of tens of centimeters whereas light is in nanometers.

You are actually in the process of re-inventing radar
So the next problem is the size of the 'eyeball' to see the cellphone reflections,
think TV antenna size,
think whirly things at airports and on top of ships, they are in the millimeter microwave region,
radio type radar was used during WW2 and that needed enormous great towers in order to 'see' big aircraft.
Think radomes on AWACS aircraft (and for the oldies amongst us - the DEW line)

The problem with inside concrete buildings is the iron reinforcing structure acting as a Faraday cage.

I think the longest wavelengths used by creatures to 'see' things is heat ? Snakes and things ?
Dont even think of illuminating the world with X-rays, nor gamma rays perish the thought. !

*
Me: "Doctor, doctor, I think I am a moth"
Doctor: "You need a psychiatrist not a doctor ! "
Me: "Yes, I know but your light was on"

Well, radar and radio and TV antennae use even larger wavelengths than cellphones. You'd think that for the microwaves you could obtain better resolution than the weather map but wouldn't be able to see as far. The problem is that I guess it's pretty much useless except as a novelty (or for sci fi plots?). If you wanted to obtain the location of a particular cellphone, that's been done and they have built in GPS capability nowadays. I have no idea what a broadband microwave dish would pick up. Probably all sorts of crap. Something that focuses on a narrow band would target a specific carrier, I suppose.

Nitpicker: So if you did happen to see a new color, do you think you would realize it? Or would your brain ignore it as something unintelligible?

geckzilla wrote:Well, radar and radio and TV antennae use even larger wavelengths than cellphones.

Sorry not true
UHF TV = 500 - 900 MHz -ish depending on country
celphones 800MHz thro' 1700MHz to 2500MHz depending on country and 3G, 4G etc.
Microwave ovens ~2500MHz
Radar all over the place but typically above (shorter) 2000MHz to way way above (even shorter)

1000MHz = 30cm
3000MHz = 10cm

You may be thinking VHF TV, at 50ish thro' 200MHz -ish is that still in use over there ?
Long gone here in UK

geckzilla wrote:Nitpicker: So if you did happen to see a new color, do you think you would realize it? Or would your brain ignore it as something unintelligible?

Like I said earlier, it is more of a thought experiment to try and imagine a new colour. I've already resigned myself to the fact that my brain will never actually see colours outside the standard human visible spectrum. But I still hope to imagine a new colour one day, in my mind's eye. I haven't managed it yet.

Nitpicker wrote:Like I said earlier, it is more of a thought experiment to try and imagine a new colour. I've already resigned myself to the fact that my brain will never actually see colours outside the standard human visible spectrum. But I still hope to imagine a new colour one day, in my mind's eye. I haven't managed it yet.

You don't even know how others perceive color. For all you know, what you call "red" I would call "salty" if I were inside your head.

Also, different people do see different colors. That is, some people see colors that others can't. But since names are learned, we all use the same ones for the same things. Our decision to break up the spectrum into discrete named colors is somewhat arbitrary. We can see thousands of discrete colors. It might have no sensible meaning to imagine what a "new" color would look like. Seeing more colors simply requires higher resolution within the sensory spectrum we already have.

MalcolmP wrote:

geckzilla wrote:Well, radar and radio and TV antennae use even larger wavelengths than cellphones.

Sorry not true
UHF TV = 500 - 900 MHz -ish depending on country
celphones 800MHz thro' 1700MHz to 2500MHz depending on country and 3G, 4G etc.
Microwave ovens ~2500MHz
Radar all over the place but typically above (shorter) 2000MHz to way way above (even shorter)

1000MHz = 30cm
3000MHz = 10cm

You may be thinking VHF TV, at 50ish thro' 200MHz -ish is that still in use over there ?
Long gone here in UK

I wasn't thinking of anything that specific. I only looked at some general charts which showed the wavelengths of radio versus microwave and concluded radio waves were much larger than microwaves. I didn't get into it the specifics of which thing uses what, unfortunately. I tried to and got confused.


Nitpicker: I was going back to my idea that maybe on some drug-induced psychedelic trip one might see a "new" color but don't have an understanding of how it would work. The thought occurs to me that perhaps people already do perceive "new" colors (or, rather, the same colors in a new way) but are unable to realize it. Or, maybe they do realize it and that's why those sorts of drugs are so popular...

geckzilla wrote: some general charts . . . I tried to and got confused.

Ah, ok, I thought of including a chart, just as well that I didnt hehee.
Well I used to use electronics, and spacecraft telecommunications, to pay my bills so ask away and we'll try to un-confuse you
(Caveat, but I was never a teacher and my language skills are sometimes lacking )
One of my babies flew past Comet Halley more years ago than I care to remember, how's that for a name drop !

Oh, I've just been told that I had too many smilies in my post and couldnt send !!! That's a shame cos I'm really a very smilesful person heheee.

Would you like me to start on the GPS bits, I left it out of the previous 'just in case', (insert another smiley)

I'd probably be interested in information regarding variations in human eyesight to detect pure wavelengths of light at the fringes of the visible spectrum. Whilst I can certainly see various shades of [what I call] red and violet, and imagine lots more, I continue to fail to even imagine any pure colour beyond these wavelengths, that one would not call a shade of red or violet.

You are not alone in that regard. It is like if someone tells me to stop thinking. I don't know how.

Nitpicker wrote:I'd probably be interested in information regarding variations in human eyesight to detect pure wavelengths of light at the fringes of the visible spectrum. Whilst I can certainly see various shades of [what I call] red and violet, and imagine lots more, I continue to fail to even imagine any pure colour beyond these wavelengths, that one would not call a shade of red or violet.

Here's how I look at it. Your color sense ranges from zero to one. What you call "red" is zero, and what you call "violet" is one. You map the physical range of your sense into the maximum possible range of zero to one. Anything outside that range is nonsensical. So it makes no more sense to imagine a color "below" red or "above" violet than it does to imagine a value less than 0% or greater than 100% (physically, not mathematically). That's why I suggest that you are seeing every possible color that your brain can interpret, and if you could see over wider wavelengths, your color perception would be just the same, with only the assignment between wavelength and perceived color changing, not new perceptual colors being added. Colors are just symbols used by your processing system. You always see from zero to one, all that changes is how many decimal points you can resolve in between.

Nitpicker wrote:detect pure wavelengths of light

I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by "pure".
Light (more generally electromagnetic radiation) is a continuum.
We dont want to start talking about Boltzmann leading to Planck do we ? That could take a wee bit of time

Then there is synesthesia to contemplate.

MalcolmP wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:detect pure wavelengths of light

I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by "pure".
Light (more generally electromagnetic radiation) is a continuum.

If we had ideal color vision, we could say what the spectral content of light was. We can't do that, because we are simple trichromats. There are many spectral combinations that we are incapable of distinguishing from each other, even though the most basic spectroscope could identify the differences.

We also lack infinite spectral resolution. So if you have a spectrally pure source- monochromatic light with a wavelength band arbitrarily narrow (approaching infinitely narrow), you have to shift if some finite amount before we can detect that the wavelength has changed. And of course, our sense of color is a conflation of wavelength and intensity, so simply changing the intensity may fool us into believing that blue is violet, or even some more extreme errors.

MalcolmP wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:detect pure wavelengths of light

I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by "pure".
Light (more generally electromagnetic radiation) is a continuum.
We dont want to start talking about Boltzmann leading to Planck do we ? That could take a wee bit of time

Then there is synesthesia to contemplate.

Simply a narrow band of EMR, isolated from a continuum.

Chris Peterson wrote:arbitrarily narrow (approaching infinitely narrow),

Exactly, nail and head are words that come to mind.

Nitpicker wrote: Simply

OK