Seeing the entire EM-band

[dragonbat2006]

Googled: Wikipedia on the Electromagnetic Spectrum. Also this Yahoo! Answers questionI'm working on an original novel about kids with superpowers and I'm trying to establish parameters for the abilities of one character. I've conceived her as able to perceive the entire EM-band and I'm trying to get a grip on the advantages and disadvantages

Comments

[alextiefling]

Being able to see X-rays would not confer sci-fi-style X-ray vision; you'd need a strong source of X-rays for that.

[lilacsigil]

Firestar in Marvel comics had this problem, and gave other people and then herself cancer. :(

[pax_athena]

I think what you need to start from is that for "seeing" there needs to be a source of light in the first place. There isn't much Gamma/X-ray/UV radiation around us in the first place, the atmosphere is a very good filter for them. One of the reasons why we are alive and why to actually observe X-rays from cosmic objects we use satellites out there in space. So you may try working from here. Her vision in X-rays will most likely be like trying to look around in a very, very, very dark room. Medical X-rays only work because there is an extra, very powerful source of radiation in there.

Try reading a book, when you not only see the words on the page, but the words on the back of the page and on all the pages below. Depth perception is likely to be shotIf you are going for a realistic depiction of X-ray vision, you also may want to spend some time on how X-rays actually work in medicine/security, i.e., what actually can be seen. Except if your ink has a ton of heavy metals in them which would most likely render it highly poisonous,

[dragonbat2006]

Thank you!

[whswhs]

Yeah, that point about sources is important. Apart from technology, there's not a lot of sources of radio waves on Earth (lightning bolts emit short bursts of radio noise); nor, fortunately for us, of hard radiation. The atmosphere is opaque, as you say, to short-wavelength UV (again, lucky for us!) and to many wavelengths of IR (greenhouse effect).

[cactuswren]

I doubt she'd be able to perceive anything more specific than an undifferentiated "glow" in long wavelengths: her eye would simply be physically too small to pick up the entire wavelength.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation#Electromagnetic_spectrum

Also, something as simple as being able to perceive ultraviolet will seriously throw off her color perception. Some white paints "glow" perceptibly in ultraviolet: I remember seeing a demonstration of two paint chips, lead white and zinc white. Photographed in visible light they looked the same, but with UV-sensitive film one was very bright and one was dark. Some flowers have ultraviolet "markings" that bees can see but humans cannot: your character might be able to see such things that other people had no perception of

[dragonbat2006]

It does! Thank you!

[illicitlearning]

On that topic, you might find it helpful to look at videos taken through UV and IR cameras (here's a few for UV and here's a few more for IR) to get a sense of how things look different in those spectra - also keep in mind that "ultraviolet" and "infrared" each cover a wide band of wavelengths (roughly comparable to visible light) so they probably won't each be just one color to her. Research what sorts of materials are UV and IR emissive, transmissive, reflective, and absorptive (for example, as demonstrated in the videos I linked, sunscreen is absorptive and a little reflective of UV, while normal glass is reflective in IR, so both materials would inhibit your character's vision).

[whswhs]

How physically realistic do you want this to be? Are we going for something approximating real world physics, or are we going for handwavy "insert technobabble" comic book rubber physics? Or something in between

[ffutures]

The reason we see in the visible spectrum is that that's where most of the light is that gets through the atmosphere. Anything else is either so long wave that you would need gigantic eyes to see it (e.g. radio), or so short wave that the atmosphere tends to absorb it. Definitely no X-ray vision without a source of x-rays, as others have said, and in any reasonable lighting conditions what she would see is mostly the visible spectrum with UV and infra-red, and some interference from microwaves.

In daylight you'd see something like this:

http://www.mattgrum.com/photo_se/IR_2.jpg

Reddened leaves (they reflect most of the infra-red that hits them), a very deep colour to the sky at some angles, depending on how much UV is getting through, etc.

[ffutures]

Forgot to say that there's a story on Twisting the Hellmouth called "The Secret Return of Alex Mack" which includes a secondary character who's invisible and mostly sees in the infra-red. Some of his problems may be relevant. Warning, it's a VERY long story and this character is a relatively small part of it. He and other invisibles first appear in chapter 36, details of his visual problems are scattered through later chapters

http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-28614