You glow, too faintly to see
The human body emits a steady trickle of visible photons, brightest in the late afternoon and strongest on the face. The light is real and far below vision.
Strong2 min read
Kobayashi, Kikuchi, and Okamura imaged subjects in a dark room with a cryogenic camera. The emission was a few hundred photons per second per square centimetre — ultraweak, higher in late afternoon than late at night, and not the infrared of body heat. These are visible wavelengths from oxidative chemistry.
The surprise is that a whole person has a map, and the map moves with the clock. It is a side effect of staying alive, counted.
Caveats
- The intensity is millions of times too dim for human vision.
- Which reactions dominate the glow is still being partitioned. The photons are not in dispute.
Sources
- 1Kobayashi M., Kikuchi D., Okamura H.. Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm. PLOS ONE 4, 2009.