question: Why can’t humans see all wavelengths, and what causes them to be harmful?
comment: We can't see all wavelengths because our eyes evolved to see underwater, and the visible spectrum is the only spectrum that could penetrate the ozone layer and large bodies of water. We never really needed to see that kind of light early on so it never became a survival necessity to human specifically, though some animals can see UV and IR better than we can. It's less harmful, not completely harmless (see light sensitivity), because it is easily absorbed by or bounces directly off our skin and other objects. UV light penetrates deep into our skin and can destroy cells and mess with DNA. Infrared light is warm but not harmful, so UV light can still cause sunburn on a cold day.
passages: Many species can see light within frequencies outside the human "visible spectrum". Bees and many other insects can detect ultraviolet light, which helps them find nectar in flowers. Plant species that depend on insect pollination may owe reproductive success to their appearance in ultraviolet light rather than how colorful they appear to humans. Birds, too, can see into the ultraviolet (300–400 nm), and some have sex-dependent markings on their plumage that are visible only in the ultraviolet range. Many animals that can see into the ultraviolet range cannot see red light or any other reddish wavelengths. Bees' visible spectrum ends at about 590 nm, just before the orange wavelengths start. Birds can see some red wavelengths, although not as far into the light spectrum as humans. The popular belief that the common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infrared and ultraviolet light is incorrect, because goldfish cannot see infrared light. Similarly, dogs are often thought to be color blind but they have been shown to be sensitive to colors, though not as many as humans. Some snakes can "see" radiant heat at wavelengths between 5 and 30 μm to a degree of accuracy such that a blind rattlesnake can target vulnerable body parts of the prey at which it strikes, and other snakes with the organ may detect warm bodies from a meter away. It may also be used in thermoregulation and predator detection. (See Infrared sensing in snakes)
   The color yellow, for example, is perceived when the L cones are stimulated slightly more than the M cones, and the color red is perceived when the L cones are stimulated significantly more than the M cones. Similarly, blue and violet hues are perceived when the S receptor is stimulated more. Cones are most sensitive to light at wavelengths around 420 nm. However, the lens and cornea of the human eye are increasingly absorptive to shorter wavelengths, and this sets the short wavelength limit of human-visible light to approximately 380 nm, which is therefore called 'ultraviolet' light. People with aphakia, a condition where the eye lacks a lens, sometimes report the ability to see into the ultraviolet range. At moderate to bright light levels where the cones function, the eye is more sensitive to yellowish-green light than other colors because this stimulates the two most common (M and L) of the three kinds of cones almost equally. At lower light levels, where only the rod cells function, the sensitivity is greatest at a blueish-green wavelength.
   Rods, which are extremely abundant (about 120 million), are in the periphery of the human retina. Rods respond only to faint levels of light and are very light sensitive, therefore, completely useless in daylight. Cones have three types of pigments with different color sensitivities, whereas rods only have one and so are achromatic (colorless). Because of the distribution of rods and cones in the human eye, people have good color vision near the fovea (where cones are) but not in the periphery (where the rods are).
   Each of the three types of cones in the retina of the eye contains a different type of photosensitive pigment, which is composed of a transmembrane protein called opsin and a light-sensitive molecule called 11-cis retinal. Each different pigment is especially sensitive to a certain wavelength of light (that is, the pigment is most likely to produce a cellular response when it is hit by a photon with the specific wavelength to which that pigment is most sensitive). The three types of cones are L, M, and S, which have pigments that respond best to light of long (especially 560 nm), medium (530 nm), and short (420 nm) wavelengths respectively.
   Humans cannot see ultraviolet light directly because the lens of the eye blocks most light in the wavelength range of 300–400 nm; shorter wavelengths are blocked by the cornea. The photoreceptor cells of the retina are sensitive to near ultraviolet light, and people lacking a lens (a condition known as aphakia) see near ultraviolet light (down to 300 nm) as whitish blue, or for some wavelengths, whitish violet, probably because all three types of cones are roughly equally sensitive to ultraviolet light; however, blue cone cells are slightly more sensitive.
   Visible wavelengths pass largely unattenuated through the Earth's atmosphere via the "optical window" region of the electromagnetic spectrum. An example of this phenomenon is when clean air scatters blue light more than red light, and so the midday sky appears blue. The optical window is also referred to as the "visible window" because it overlaps the human visible response spectrum. The near infrared (NIR) window lies just out of the human vision, as well as the medium wavelength infrared (MWIR) window, and the long wavelength or far infrared (LWIR or FIR) window, although other animals may experience them.
  
  Section::::History.
   The response of cones to various wavelengths of light is called their spectral sensitivity. In normal human vision, the spectral sensitivity of a cone falls into one of three subtypes, often called blue, green, and red, but more accurately known as short, medium, and long wavelength-sensitive cone subtypes. It is a lack of one or more of the cone subtypes that causes individuals to have deficiencies in colour vision or various kinds of colour blindness. These individuals are not blind to objects of a particular colour, but are unable to distinguish between colours that can be distinguished by people with normal vision. Humans have this trichromatic vision, while most other mammals lack cones with red sensitive pigment and therefore have poorer dichromatic colour vision. However, some animals have four spectral subtypes, e.g. the trout adds an ultraviolet subgroup to short, medium, and long subtypes that are similar to humans. Some fish are sensitive to the polarization of light as well.
   The spectrum does not contain all the colors that the human eyes and brain can distinguish. Unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations like magenta, for example, are absent because they can only be made from a mix of multiple wavelengths. Colors containing only one wavelength are also called pure colors or spectral colors.
   The response curve as a function of wavelength varies for each type of cone. Because the curves overlap, some tristimulus values do not occur for any incoming light combination. For example, it is not possible to stimulate "only" the mid-wavelength (so-called "green") cones; the other cones will inevitably be stimulated to some degree at the same time. The set of all possible tristimulus values determines the human "color space". It has been estimated that humans can distinguish roughly 10 million different colors.
   Night-useful spectral range techniques can sense radiation that is invisible to a human observer. Human vision is confined to a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum called visible light. Enhanced spectral range allows the viewer to take advantage of non-visible sources of electromagnetic radiation (such as near-infrared or ultraviolet radiation). Some animals such as the mantis shrimp Trout can see using much more of the infrared and/or ultraviolet spectrum than humans.
  
  Section::::Types of ranges.:Intensity range.
  
  Sufficient intensity range is simply the ability to see with very small quantities of light.
   Section::::Physiology of color perception.:Cone cells in the human eye.
  
  A range of wavelengths of light stimulates each of these receptor types to varying degrees. The brain combines the information from each type of receptor to give rise to different perceptions of different wavelengths of light.
   Each of this equipment have an optical interface for their functioning but they employ very different mechanisms, principles and restrictions to process the incoming light. Therefore, there is also a large variety of interference mechanisms. Consequently, there is not a single and simple metric that describes the level of degradation or malfunction of each of these type of equipment.
  
  Section::::Examples of victims of temporal light interference.
  
  Section::::Examples of victims of temporal light interference.:Visible Light Communication (VLC).
   Most organisms with colour vision can detect ultraviolet light. This high energy light can be damaging to receptor cells. With a few exceptions (snakes, placental mammals), most organisms avoid these effects by having absorbent oil droplets around their cone cells. The alternative, developed by organisms that had lost these oil droplets in the course of evolution, is to make the lens impervious to UV light—this precludes the possibility of any UV light being detected, as it does not even reach the retina.
  
  Section::::Physiology.:Rods and cones.
   Above the range of visible light, ultraviolet light becomes invisible to humans, mostly because it is absorbed by the cornea below 360 nm and the internal lens below 400 nm. Furthermore, the rods and cones located in the retina of the human eye cannot detect the very short (below 360 nm) ultraviolet wavelengths and are in fact damaged by ultraviolet. Many animals with eyes that do not require lenses (such as insects and shrimp) are able to detect ultraviolet, by quantum photon-absorption mechanisms, in much the same chemical way that humans detect visible light.
   BULLET::::- Cone monochromacy, type II, if its existence were established, would be the case in which the retina contains no rods, and only a single type of cone. Such an animal would be unable to see at all at lower levels of illumination, and of course would be unable to distinguish hues. In practice, it is hard to produce an example of such a retina, at least as the normal condition for a species.
  
  Section::::Animals that are monochromats.
   Above infrared in frequency comes visible light. The Sun emits its peak power in the visible region, although integrating the entire emission power spectrum through all wavelengths shows that the Sun emits slightly more infrared than visible light. By definition, visible light is the part of the EM spectrum the human eye is the most sensitive to. Visible light (and near-infrared light) is typically absorbed and emitted by electrons in molecules and atoms that move from one energy level to another. This action allows the chemical mechanisms that underlie human vision and plant photosynthesis. The light that excites the human visual system is a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. A rainbow shows the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum; infrared (if it could be seen) would be located just beyond the red side of the rainbow with ultraviolet appearing just beyond the violet end.
   A system limited only by the quality of the optics is said to be diffraction-limited. However, since atmospheric turbulence is normally the limiting factor for visible systems looking through long atmospheric paths, most systems are turbulence-limited. Corrections can be made by using adaptive optics or post-processing techniques.
  
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  Section::::Measuring optical resolution.
  
  A variety of measurement systems are available, and use may depend upon the system being tested.
   In water, light attenuates for each wavelength, differently. The UV, violet ( 420 nm), and red (< 500 nm) wavelengths disappear before blue light (470 nm), which penetrates clear water the deepest. The wavelength composition is constant for each depth and is almost independent of time of the day and the weather. To gauge depth, an animal would need two photopigments sensitive to different wavelengths to compare different ranges of the spectrum. Such pigments may be expressed in different structures.
   Many species can see light with frequencies outside the human "visible spectrum". Bees and many other insects can detect ultraviolet light, which helps them to find nectar in flowers. Plant species that depend on insect pollination may owe reproductive success to ultraviolet "colors" and patterns rather than how colorful they appear to humans. Birds, too, can see into the ultraviolet (300–400 nm), and some have sex-dependent markings on their plumage that are visible only in the ultraviolet range. Many animals that can see into the ultraviolet range, however, cannot see red light or any other reddish wavelengths. For example, bees' visible spectrum ends at about 590 nm, just before the orange wavelengths start. Birds, however, can see some red wavelengths, although not as far into the light spectrum as humans. It is a myth that the common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infrared and ultraviolet light; their color vision extends into the ultraviolet but not the infrared.
   For adaption to occur at very low levels, the human eye needs to have a large sample of light across the signal in order to get a reliable image. This leads to the human eye being unable to resolve high spatial frequencies in low light since the observer is spatially averaging the light signal.
   The retina of the human eye contains photoreceptive cells called cones that allow color vision. A normal trichromat individual possesses three different types of cones to distinguish different colors within the visible spectrum from 380 nm to 740 nm. The three types of cones are designated L, M, and S cones, and each type is sensitive to a certain range of wavelength of light depending on what photopigment it contains. More specifically, the L cone absorbs around 560 nm, the M cone absorbs near 530 nm, and the S cone absorbs near 420 nm. Contrary to popular belief, the peak absorption frequency for L, M, and S cones do not exactly correspond to red, green, and blue wavelength. Rather, the peak frequency for the L cone is orange, yellowish green in M cones, and blue-violet in S cones. These cones transduce the absorbed light into electrical information to be relayed to neurons in the retina such as retinal bipolar cells and retinal ganglion cells, before reaching the brain.
   It is a known problem that high levels of output of the UVa part of the spectrum can both cause cellular and DNA damage to sensitive parts of their bodies - especially the eyes were blindness is the result from an improper UVa/b source use and placement photokeratitis. For many keepers there must also be a provision for an adequate heat source this has resulted in the marketing of heat and light "combination" products. Keepers should be careful of these "combination' light/ heat and UVa/b generators, they typically emit high levels of UVa with lower levels of UVb that are set and difficult to control so that animals can have their needs met. A better strategy is to use individual sources of these elements and so they can be placed and controlled by the keepers for the max benefit of the animals.
   The combined absorption spectra of the gases in the atmosphere leave "windows" of low opacity, allowing the transmission of only certain bands of light. The optical window runs from around 300 nm (ultraviolet-C) up into the range humans can see, the visible spectrum (commonly called light), at roughly 400–700 nm and continues to the infrared to around 1100 nm. There are also infrared and radio windows that transmit some infrared and radio waves at longer wavelengths. For example, the radio window runs from about one centimeter to about eleven-meter waves.
  
  Section::::Optical properties.:Emission.
   Individuals with various forms of colour blindness such as deuteranopia and protanopia are missing human middle wavelength sensitive or long wavelength sensitive opsins. Their minimum wavelength differences are 5 but only at around 500.
   The eye is most sensitive to damage by UV in the lower UVC band at 265–275 nm. Radiation of this wavelength is almost absent from sunlight but is found in welder's arc lights and other artificial sources. Exposure to these can cause "welder's flash" or "arc eye" (photokeratitis) and can lead to cataracts, pterygium and pinguecula formation. To a lesser extent, UVB in sunlight from 310–280 nm also causes photokeratitis ("snow blindness"), and the cornea, the lens, and the retina can be damaged.
  
presuppositions: All invisible wavelength light is harmful.
corrections: Not all invisible lights are harmful, for example, infrared light is not harmful.
raw_presuppositions: Humans should be able to see all wavelengths. Humans should be able to see all wavelengths. Humans should be able to see all wavelengths. All invisible wavelength light is harmful.
raw_corrections: Human eyes are only evolved to see the visible spectrum. Light outsode of that spectrum was never needed to survive.  Human eyes are only evolved to see the visible spectrum. Light outsode of that spectrum was never needed to survive.  Human eyes are only evolved to see the visible spectrum. Light outsode of that spectrum was never needed to survive.  Not all invisible lights are harmful, for example, infrared light is not harmful.