(urth) Inhumi eyes and names
Jerry Friedman
jerry_friedman at yahoo.com
Sun Sep 30 18:14:02 PDT 2012
> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> On 9/28/2012 5:29 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> Infrared vision for the inhumi makes perfect sense to me. The sky is
> blue because short wavelengths are scattered more than long; we get lots of blue
> light from the sky, but little red. Therefore infrared should be scattered even
> less. A being that could see only in the infrared, and maybe not the near
> infrared, would be able to see the sun, but the sky would look black to him or
> her. I can't think of why such a creature wouldn't be able to see the
> stars.
>> Aren't the stars visible during the day on Urth, because the sun is
> faint and reddish? Perhaps gthis implies a symbolic, or for some, a coded link?
>
> That too. But I had not thought (not being a physicist) of scattering, which
> helps to obscure the stars for us. But wouldn't stars themselves tend not to
> emit infrared visible over interstellar distances?
I don't see why. There's be less energy from the stars we see, but I imagine it would be enough to see them. Many stars, probably the majority, emit more strongly in the infrared than the visible, but most of them are pretty faint.
A check of the archives (I'm too lazy to check the books) says the inhumi are cold-blooded. That would help. There's still a constraint that they'd have to use wavelengths considerably shorter than those produced at typical temperatures on Green, where it's hot. I was thinking about trying to figure out what would be necessary for the day sky to look black to them. Did I mention laziness?
Jerry Friedman
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