Human bodies emit photons. What’s more, they do so in a pattern that repeats itself every day. Find out why you’re shooting light from your face, at regular intervals.
There are a few animals that we know glow in the dark. Fireflies, certain species of fish, and jellyfish are among the animals that have been shown to emit visible light. Now, humans have joined their ranks. We don’t emit light the way they do. They have specialized chemical processes that are meant to produce bright, concentrated visible light. We mostly do it by accident. But we do it on a regular schedule.
Researchers aimed ultra-sensitive cameras at people in a totally dark room. They captured photon emission levels that varied diurnally, probably as a result of the people’s metabolism revving up and cooling down. How do we do it? According to the researchers creepily filming people in the dark, we’re not special:
Virtually all living organisms emit extremely weak light, spontaneously without external photoexcitation. This biophoton emission is categorized in different phenomena of light emission from bioluminescence, and is believed to be a by-product of biochemical reactions in which excited molecules are produced from bioenergetic processes that involves active oxygen species. Human body is glimmering with light of intensity weaker than 1/1000 times the sensitivity of naked eyes.
Still, we do glow. Now hard can it be to make our eyes a thousand times more powerful so we can see each other glowing in the dark?
[Source: Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rythm.]
