Me and my girl-friend were talking about this earlier today and I literally spent my entire day off looking up the answer. I will admit, this will be a hard answer to explain, especially when the answer was tough to find.

16 million is an estimate of how many different colors a 24 bit RGB computer monitor can simulate and while most of us may not care how mant colors we can see in a computer, this does has a little relevance to how many different colors the human eye can distinguish. ”True” color is also called 24-bit color . Here, each color is 8 bits, for a total of 24 bits. Since each color has 256 shades, we can multiply 256 for red, times 256 for green, times 256 for blue and get millions of colors, (256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216). Millions of colors are pretty much what’s accepted for a monitor’s colors to look “true” to the human eye. But I digress.

So, we have a general idea of how many “colors” we can distinguish or at least see in a computer screen.

But what about “real colors”? Both in and out of a computer monitor? How many colors are there in our world?

I’ve found that, just as there are infinitely many numbers between 380 and 740 – including all of the fractions, or number of wavelengths between 380 and 740 nanometers, the visible spectrum of light by the way. That doesn’t even count the different tints and shades obtained by mixing in white, black, etc. So, there is an infinite number of colors, if you look at it that way.

However, that does not mean that the human eye can distinguish an infinite number of colors. Our eyes are not that powerful. Other organisms can see colors that we humans are blind to. For example, honeybees can see colors in ultraviolet light that is invisible to humans, though they see less of the red end of the spectrum. Birds can see not only ultraviolet but also red light; notice the red coloring of many flowers that are pollinated by birds. Unlike humans and bees, which each have systems containing three different color-sensing visual pigments, birds’ retinas contain four different pigments. This implies that the RGB monitors that can mimic any color for a human eye would need to project an additional color in order to mimic all of the colors a bird can see.

The actual estimate for how many different colors the human eye can distinguish varies between about 1 and 10 million, depending on the reference which you consult. However, the perception of color varies from one person to another, so there can be no single number that is true for everyone. The number of different colors that you, as an individual, can distinguish also varies dramatically according to the conditions; it drops to zero in low light conditions, in which only the rod cells of the retina can function, as the cone cells of the retina are required for color vision.

Something else to take into consideration is that colors aren’t the sort of thing that exists somewhere in the universe, they’re just perceptions we have in response to different physical phenomena. The phenomena most closely associated with different colors are the various frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, and there are indeed an infinite amount of different frequencies that this radiation can have. Of these, only a very small selection fall within the range that we call “visible light”, corresponding to the spectrum of colors we are familiar with. However, it is a continuous spectrum and so there are an infinite number of possible values of frequency of visible light.

Today scientist are interested also in larger than threshold color differences: the type of differences that would make you reject a certain touch-up paint because it’s not a close enough match to the color of the paint of your car. Even with such a metric there are close to a million discriminable colors on a computer monitor which only can reproduce a fraction of the colors we can see out in the real world.

Your Thoughts?

I’ve see this question asked many times on other blog sites, websites, message boards and forums. I never found a good answer, until now. It took me a couple of weeks of reading outside sources and dozens of books from the local library to come of up some sort of an answer. I did this not just for this blog but for my own knowledge honestly. So where do we begin?

Well here’s a few theories that sound like a pretty interesting place to start:

First off, technically darkness does not move, it is always present, and light is layed on top of it. (As an example, consider a table as being darkness, a tablecloth as being light: when you pull the tablecloth off, the table itself (darkness) doesn’t move).

This may all sound interesting, but in our simple minds, darkness and light are opposites; so from what I’ve found, if we follow the yin-yang principle it isobvious to me that disturbing one of the two means that the other is disturbed in the opposite direction.

Another conclusion I came to was that darkness possibly moves at the same speed as light, and it meets the laws of motion in that darkness is the equal and opposite reaction for the action of the movement of light.

Now to me, this sounds more plausible, but the problem in this theory is that it seems that dark and light exist at the same time in the same place. Sure, if you turn on the light in a closed room the space that was formerly filled with darkness is now filled with light. We know this, that means that the light was always there, but it was suppressed by darkness. Confused? So was I.

Ok, still with me? I also found this possible answer; as we know light moves. So darkness is the absence of light and does not move.

Its kind of like hot and cold right? I mean, heat moves and cold is the absence of heat. You can describe the rate at which you “cool” and infer a “speed of cold” from that. However the physical reality is that only heat moves.

Similarly you might say a “speed of darkness” measuring the rate at which darkness envelopes a room when the light is switched off (for example). But then again, you are actually “measuring” a function of the speed of light, in the room’s case, it is the speed at which the light leaves the room. 

My my opinion? 

First, darkness is a constant. It is and exists everywhere and that’s why it, in theory, moves faster than light instantly. When we shine a light on an object we see a shadow. That shadow exists because of the continuity of darkness and is only temporally dimensionally displaced by light. The continuity of darkness explains why it cannot be measured, if it always exists even when it cannot be seen, then it has an infinite speed. Also, I am toying with the idea that the speed of light is the sqrt of the speed of darkness. Which would mean that darkness travels at around 34,596,000,000m/sec.

I think this could help explain space-time travel through wormholes or black-holes. Additionally, from my readings, theories that the speed of darkness is the same as the speed of light based on Newtons 3rd law( for every action there’s a equal and opposite reaction). I slightly disagree with the this theory on the basis that the theory of darkness as a constant would not allow it to be effected by light; thus exists both in the absence and present of light, just on a different plane. I also think it is the speed of darkness that created the environment for the universe to be created. The extreme power and speed of “dark-matter” and energy expanded to such a vastness that the compression in the vacuum of space became so intense, it inverted a percentage of dark sub-atomic particles or matter and caused the big bang. But, this is just my own personal theory. 

Hope all of that wasn’t too boring for you guys. But please comment if you guys have any opinions, I accept all viewpoints.

Your Thoughts?

Big picture huh?

Its been raining for days where I live and as I was walking to class, I saw those darn earthworms again. I always wondered why this happened for years. Many of you may know this already but hell, I didn’t know. So with that said, here’s what I found….

Researchers hypothesize several reasons why heavy rain storms bring these crawlers out of their soil homes. For years scientists seemed to think the only reason earthworms came to the soil surface after a good rain was to prevent drowning in their water-filled burrows.

As it turn out, contrary to popular belief, worms are not forced out of the ground because their holes will be flooded.Worms breath through a chemical process so they actually can breath in water for days. There are many reasons why worms come out from the ground when it rains but not the typical reasons people think. Sure some of us would assume its because they like the conditions and its easier for them to slither when the ground is wet, but I would not have guessed it was for mating purposes. In fact, one of the reasons worms go above ground is to mate, so many worms are above ground when it rains because they like the conditions, so why not find a mate?

But even so, only certain species of earthworms surface to mate, only a few of the 4,400 existing species do in fact, in turn, making it unlikely that mating is a primary reason for widespread surfacing.

Another explanation involves rain drop vibrations on the soil surface sounding similar to predator vibrations, like that of moles. Earthworms often come to the surface to escape moles.“Rain can set up vibrations on top of the soil like mole vibrations,” said Professor Josef Gorres of the University of Vermont’s Department of Plant and Soil Science. “Similar to how earthworms move upwards and out of the way when predator vibrations are felt, they could move in a similar way for rain vibrations.”

Also, the earthworm’s cuticle (outer layer of skin) must remain moist to absorb oxygen. When they are in soil, they receive oxygen from air trapped underground. Rain-soaked dirt, however, fills that air space with water, and although earthworms can absorb oxygen from the water, air contains more oxygen, so they will surface for more efficient breathing

Your Thoughts?

Hey guys!!! I’m back! I know its been over a month since my last blog but I’ve been busy with school, work, and making movies. By the way, make sure you guys subscribe to my YouTube channel “Graffiti Bird”.

I also wanted to say thanks to anyone whose followed, liked, commented and viewed my blog. We’re almost up to 3000 views!

But anyway, enough of that.

I honestly never knew there was such a thing as this and when I say this, I’m talking about humans with horns. Horns are actually called “cutaneous horns”. Cutaneous horns, also known as cornu cutaneum, refers to a specific appearance of a skin lesion in which a cone-shaped protuberance arises on the skin caused by overgrowth of the most superficial layer of skin (epidermis).

In lamming terms, there like tumors that grow on the outside of the skin.These horns are formed by a build-up of keratin, which is also known as hyperkeratosis. Keratin is the same substance that forms our fingernails. Most horns are benign; however, a small percentage of cutaneous horns are either precancerous or malignant at their base, at the skin’s surface. Lighter skinned people between the ages of 60 and 70 are more likely to develop hyperkeratosis.Cutaneous horns are not usually painful, but they can become painful at their base. Because cutaneous horns grow out from the skin, they can be easily bumped. When these horns are bumped, trauma to the skin can result in a lesion.

Most cases of these conical tumors are noncancerous, but squamous cell carcinoma is present in about 20 percent of the people having these horns. Cutaneous horns can be removed with surgery, but the underlying cause for them may need to be identified and treated. Cryosurgery can be done which destroys the different types of hyperkeratosis. If the horns are not cancerous, surgical removal of the horn from the base of the skin is usually all that is needed.

Now, its time a visual aid! Check this video out of a REALLY, REALLY, REALLY old woman with this condition:

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Before we start, let me explain this picture for those of you who haven’t seen it before. A couple of years ago, websites were buzzing over claims that remains from Noah’s Ark may have been found on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. The founders, led by an evangelical group, said they were, “99.9 percent”, that a wooden structure found on the mountainside was part of a ship that housed the biblical Noah, his family and a slew of creatures during a giant flood 4,800 years ago. Whether they’re claims were correct or not leads me into my blog…..

(Besides Jesus walking on water, him dying from three nails on a cross, and Moses parting the Red Sea) I can’t think of no better example that demonstrates why the Bible is not the “holy word” of any deity than the tale of Noah and his ark. You guys have probably heard blogs like this before, with this same topic no less. But I’ll try to present the various problems in an organized yet fun way; so let’s begin by looking at this highly questionable account from a common sense point of view.

So allow me to step back within the story, we have a god who has to modify virtually all of his creations for the solely expressed reason of the people having become wicked and evil (Genesis 6:5), yet wicked and evil people continue to exist throughout the Bible. Right off the bat, the foundation for the story fails to make sense. Why would an omniscient god have to destroy all of his work for a specific quality that he knew would continue to exist even unto this very day? The flood was for the “good”, yet God carried out his horrific genocide anyway. I find this to be the most disturbing and perhaps the most ridiculous premise ever conjured by the human mind.

Why did Noah only take along land creatures and birds, not plants nor fish that make up a large part of the world’s total species? “We’re talking about something plausible here,” said David Menton, an associate professor emeritus of anatomy at Washington University who works for Answers in Genesis, founder of a controversial Creation Museum in Kentucky. The museum, which opened four years ago, depicts the Bible’s first book, Genesis, as literal truth. Its exhibits have been welcomed by those who actual believe that God created the heavens and the Earth in just six days, about 6,000 years ago.

Here’s another thought; elephants eat around 660 lbs of greenery per day, times 150 days on the ark you get, 99,000 lbs of greenery for one elephant. That’s excluding Hippo’s, Giraffes, Bears, Rhino’s, etc. With all the weight of animals (16,000 species) and food storage you get a number around…20 million pounds. If you argue that there were baby animals then babies, they would need milk supply from their mothers. The stored milk would go bad in hours. Noah’s dimensions of the ark would simply not hold up to that.

Second, the waters reached to the highest mountains (let’s say around 30,000 ft). The deepest part of the ocean is around 35,000 feet. With 40 days of rain (fresh water) that would equal out to about 80% of fresh water mixed with sea water. All fresh water fish, and all marine life would die in hours.

Third, the carnivorous animals would need to eat even after the ark had landed on Mt. Ararat. So, what did they eat until the other animals would populate? Again, if there were baby animals they would have to wait even longer. No dead carcasses. 150 days in water, they would decompose and the meat would be no good. Last but not least, a polar bear can swim up to 50 miles. How do you expect it to swim across the Atlantic? That not including the other animals in South America, Australia, North America, Antarctica, and Green Land. Your Thoughts?

I’m thinking aloud here but this topic is open for discussion so comment below if you guys have any opinions or thoughts.

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