WEBVTT - Almost Blue 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.280 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to well your mind. 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.960 My name is Robert lamp and Um Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:21.400 we are podcasting on a very gray day. Fog has 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.520 not lifted for days, right that the sky is just 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:30.760 totally gray. My son keeps asking where sign where? Where 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:33.400 where do you go? And I have to begin to 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.839 explain rudimentary celestial mechanics to it, and the need to 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.920 test the same question again and then ask where where 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.400 is the blue sky? Well? And I think that is 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:47.200 the power of the blue sky in our lives, right, 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.400 It's depicted everywhere, It's we we were talking about this. 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:55.080 In children's books. You don't often see gray skies depicted. 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.680 You see blue skies. Will you do? In the Lorax, 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.720 which is my son's favorite book for seemingly forever, now, 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:04.679 very blue skies as well? Well? You have to because 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:07.959 of the small took skies of course, yes, Um, But 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:10.520 you know, I think blue is one of those really 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:15.440 important colors to us because on some physical level but 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:20.080 also subconscious level, it in end caps our visual field 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.240 that we think of when we think about our existence. 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:24.240 It's the color of the sky and the color of 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.880 the ocean. Um. And yet this is the thing about 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:33.280 blue is the ultimate magician, appearing mostly as an illusion, 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:35.679 which will discuss in a bit. Yeah, it's a it's 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.440 a powerful color. Uh. You know, we're gonna get into 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:42.880 some of the color theory in a bit that. Yeah. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.160 I mean, it's the it's the color ultimately of the 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:47.240 of the sky and ocean. It's kind of the color 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.720 of emotion itself. I mean, people seeing the blues. Uh. 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:56.440 Picasso went through his blue period. Like I can't like 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:58.560 when I think of blue in terms of its just 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.120 emotional power, So I always end up picturing the uh 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:05.160 the picture of the Picasso did the old guitarist, you know, 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:08.239 where the very also kind of gray looking guitarist is 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.200 sending there his head bowed and looks old and tired 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:15.880 and sad, and he's just you know, caked in blue shades. Um. 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:19.399 I Also, I feel like with blue, I think back 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.160 a lot two times when I was a kid looking 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.200 up at like a really clear blue sky and there 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.720 being something comforting but also kind of oppressive about it, 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.160 you know. And uh, And I think about that a 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:33.480 lot too, especially if I'm if I'm far from home 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:35.040 and I look up and see that blue sky, there's 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.240 something there's something comforting and universal about it, but also 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.200 universal and in the same way that death is universal. 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.880 You know, it's that relentless blue and it's the relentless 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:48.560 light of the sun. Right, there's nothing to filter it. 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.720 I mean, is it any wonder that modern Mongolians still 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.760 pray to uh munk punk Kingary the eternal blue sky? 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:01.400 Is it any wonder? Ultraman Ultramarine is the pigment often 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:03.880 reserved to paint the mantle of a virgin Mary. By 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:07.400 the way, so she is typically seen with a very 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.960 blue color scheme. Indeed, so there are all sorts of associations. 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.639 For me, it's Miles Davis kind of blue, so in 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.840 that synesthesia sense. Okay, so you listen to Miles Davis 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.520 seeing the blues and you actually kind of well, he 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.919 has an album called kind of Blue and um, so 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:29.359 I always think of it's a sort of rainy night 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:34.399 music and it's a it's a very concentric patterned um 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.800 type of album, and that each song builds on this 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.240 familiar pattern, which kind of messes with it a bit. 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:44.280 But so for me, it's that that's space of jazz 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.000 and blues and melancholy. And again, I feel like I've 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.520 been talking about this a lot lately, the space the 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:55.640 absence um. But you know, again, the blue can be anything. 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:58.880 It can be that baby blue, um, it can be 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.960 Prussian blue, Turk boys blue, very hippyish to me, hey, 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.440 And indeed than you have that whole literally gray area 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.240 where blue touches gray and then you lose yourself and 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:13.560 like the German grays and German blues melding together bahlsi 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:18.839 and blues yah. On the color spectrum, it's wedged between 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.760 violet and green. It has a wavelength between four hundred 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:27.080 and fifty and four hundred nanometers, and blues with a 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:31.080 higher frequency and a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:35.520 while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:39.560 gradually appear more green. Now pure blue that kind of 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:42.440 you said, have that sort of existential angst too. In 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:47.000 the middle has a wavelength of four hundred and seventy nanometers. 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:49.039 And we'll discuss this later, but this just happens to 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:54.160 be the range of um of color that we perceive 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:56.800 the most with the human eye. And of course I 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.040 should also mention that blue is my son's face, a 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.560 color which I find curious because we've my wife and 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.039 I have done no like coaxing along those lines, like 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:08.839 his his room is green, and we're not we're not 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.440 shoving a lot of like blue for boys, pink for 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.960 girls kind of thing down his throat. But he's he's 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.240 he's just, without question, latched onto blue is his favorite color. 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:20.640 And you ask him he likes blue. If he get 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:24.240 picks out his own shirt animal designs aside, he's going 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:26.479 to go for blue every time. Yeah, my daughter who's 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.640 six years old, also loves blue. I love blue. And 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:32.000 what this is pointing to is that there's sort of 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:37.800 a universal um gravitational force of blue over us. In 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.480 two thousand and eleven, Deluxe Paints conducted a survey involving 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.960 response from thirty different countries and found that across cultures, 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:51.120 blue was the preferred color among men and among women. 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:53.880 Now you're probably wondering, what else, what about the other 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.560 colors out there? The second favorite colors are red and green, 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:02.440 followed by orange, brown, brown, and purple. Brown is good. 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:04.800 Brown is an earth tone. My yoga man is brown, 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.320 so is poop all right, and then yellow is the 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:14.080 least favorite color, preferred only by five percent of people. Wow, 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.400 I'm so glad that yellow is half the color on 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.919 our our logo. But there, yeah, but we didn't choose that. 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.760 We just it's for you five percent out there. We're 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:28.040 looking after you. Another interesting finding is that both men 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:33.400 and women increasingly dislike orange as they age. Interesting. I've 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.480 heard before about orange being an unsettling color, like um, 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:41.240 if I remember correctly, the torture chamber in David Cronenberg's 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.200 video Drone is orange and color because they designed it 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.279 with some color theory in mind that said that orange 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.640 is a very unsettling color and is ideal if you 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:56.400 have an interrogation. I'm setting inmates right sometimes wear orange? 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:00.080 Or is that just? Is that just the show was 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.720 they would show up if they escape, because again, who 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.159 would wear orange? Who's gonna wear a full orange jumpsuit? 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:10.840 And unless they've escaped from prison? If I'm like orange 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:15.480 a lot, yeah, I mean I'm not opposed to it. 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.440 I did go to a university whose color was orange, 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:19.960 and that kind of turned me against it a little bit, 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.200 I guess, but you know, but by and large, I 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.800 don't have anything against orange. Alright, Okay, well let's think 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:31.080 about six hundred million years ago, when things were just 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.600 business as usual. The sun was shining in the Earth 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:40.679 was absorbing and reflecting that light, and uh, really, nobody 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.480 knew any better about what sort of colors were being 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.720 produced because there was no organism that could perceive that 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:48.720 light and color yet. Yeah. I mean, as far as 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:52.160 the organisms actual pigmentation goes, you could have bright red, 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:55.360 you could have a gray organism over here, sort of 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:59.280 translucent over here. But it doesn't really matter because what 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:01.960 limited kind of perception is going on is really just 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:05.240 more about light and dark. It's not it's about about it. 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:06.840 So the sun is up, the sun is down, the 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.840 moon is out. It's that kind of navigational, uh, sensory input. 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:13.880 But in terms of what color anything is, it does 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:17.120 not matter at all. Yeah. And now think about the 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.880 Earth and all of the vegetation and the creatures that 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.680 we're leaving living on it. Six hundred million years ago, 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.680 a lot of the colors and plants and animals um 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.160 came from and continued to come from, pigments, colored chemicals 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:35.080 that absorb certain wavelengths of light. And these pigments while 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.520 we think of them is more like ornamental today because um, 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:41.199 you know, we've largely hacked them that way our evolution 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:44.520 has um. They have been helpful in other ways. Granules 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.840 of melanin, for example, help keep bird feathers strong and 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:52.120 help protect human skin from the sun. And chlorophyll is 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.760 a chemical that helps plants trap light for photosynthesis. It 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:59.839 also makes them look green. Yeah, because we often we 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.080 like a colorful bird and we instantly think, oh, what's 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:05.840 colored this way for attention? It's all about a visual 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:10.000 presentation or it's about camouflage. But their actual structural properties 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:12.120 that are essential here, Yeah, and we tend to think 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.680 of them more as like color currency. Now again, peacock's 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:21.120 this this amazing display that is meant to attract a mate. 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:26.280 But those are things again that got hacked in evolution. Um, 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:30.920 it wasn't until a predator with eyesight showed up on 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:35.839 the scene that this became important. Color became important, and indeed, 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:38.200 according to the NPR story how Animals Hack the Rainbow 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.240 and got stumped on blue, this animal is probably like 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:45.520 a super fast shrimp creature. It's suddenly it has eyes, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:48.280 it can see, it can pick up on colors. And 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.440 so if you happen to belong to a species of say, 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:57.120 bright red, little floaty, slimy invertebrate creatures up and all. 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.520 Now it hadn't mattered that you're bright red, but suddenly 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:04.240 here's this superpowered super predator shrimp and you're just sticking 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:09.240 out like a sore delicious thumb. Right. And as eyesight 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:13.679 evolves in creatures and as other creatures respond to it, 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:18.840 then you begin to see animals organism starting to actually 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:23.040 go after camouflage, go after other tactics that would help 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.960 them to survive with the colors that they have. Yeah, 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.080 I mean, and it's it really gets just increasingly complex. 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:31.960 Uh as as organisms evolved, so you end up with 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.680 just this this perplexing maze of interactions that we continue 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.520 to try and understand where you have bright colors on 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:40.680 one creature or saying stay away from me, and the 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:42.920 other hand is saying come closer, have a taste, and 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:45.920 then other times they're saying, please confuse me with the 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.400 other creature that this color just like me that happens 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.520 to be poisonous. It gets very complicated, very Yeah, you 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.040 have the whole pantone spectrum in there, and a bunch 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.040 of reasons for them. As you have just pointed out 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.480 a few Now, the majority of color earths are produced 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:04.199 by pigments, now particles of the color chemicals that we 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:08.200 talked about, and these are found within specialized cells. And 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.560 these include melanins, which are found in nearly all organisms 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.920 and produce more of the earth tones that you see 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.439 that that are pretty common even to us, right as humans. 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:23.120 And then you have carotenoids, which or carotenoids which produce 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.280 colors primarily in the red to yellow end of the spectrum. 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:31.760 So think about say, flamingos, they're pink because they're eating 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:36.359 carotenoid rich shrimp. Yeah, you look at like a baby flamingo. 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.280 They're not pink. They're not born pink, they're born kind 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.000 of gray. It's only through that diet that they end 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:47.160 up uh stealing the pigments and incorporating them into their diet, right, 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.120 And it's a really easy way to eat pink b pink. Right. 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.640 Then you would think the same thing would apply to 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.400 colors like blue and green, but it would be wrong 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:01.160 because it's really hard to replicate these colors into the 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:05.199 skin or feathers through diet. By the way, if if 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:10.520 humans eat enough carotenoids, generally through carrots, you can actually 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.640 adjust the color in your eyes just a little bit, 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:18.160 but nothing on the scale of changing your actual skin color. Um. 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:20.840 Of course, if you eat beats, which also have carotenoids, 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.480 you will see other color alternations take place. We talked 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:27.440 about this in the Biospheriens, Right, they had a diet 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.400 of sweet potatoes so much so that their skins, right, 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.959 they actually eat enough sweet potatoes to change their skin color. Yeah, 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:39.360 if your diet is extreme, Um, you can actually get 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:42.480 in on the flamingo ritual here if you want to 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:46.640 do that, a diet a sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes only. Now, 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:50.839 even I were talking about how the fact that green 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:57.440 isn't created in skinner feathers easily seems counterintuitive because you 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.280 look around and you look at the earth and it's 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.000 just full of green vegetation, right, Yeah, I mean, it's 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.240 one thing to think about blue as being this sort 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:10.120 of difficult to obtain pigment because you know, mine instantly 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:12.960 turns back to say the Radio Lab episode where they 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:15.640 talked about the possibility that the sky isn't really blue, 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.920 that it's all just about us being told that it's blue. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.160 And I think about Oliver Sacks and as the book Hallucinations, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:26.040 you know, seeking after indigo and uh and and taking 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:30.600 hallucinogens in order to to perceive like pure inhuman indigo. 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.400 And then you you've taken all that information, you can say, 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:35.040 all right, I can see where blue would not really 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.240 be a thing per se in in in the course 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.800 of evolution. But green, yeah, green is everywhere. Green would 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.760 it would be vital to your ability to camouflage yourself. 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:46.920 And in fact, we see so many different green creatures, 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.280 but when you get right down to it, we don't 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:55.200 really have that much green, uh in the natural world. No. 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:57.360 And in fact, there's a bit of color mixing for 0:13:57.400 --> 0:13:59.840 some animals. So if you see a green frog out 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:02.760 in nature, it's not necessarily that they're eating a bunch 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.640 of chlorophyll and they're they're turning green. It's that they're 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.120 actually color mixing within the skin and using those pigments 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:13.600 pigments to produce that that green coloration. Yeah, it's a 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.160 yellow pigment and a blue structural color and the two 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:20.800 end up combining into this green effect. Yeah. Now, um, 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.720 so far in terms of blue, only two vertebrates have 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.920 been found that have blue coloring as a result of 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:32.120 cellular pigment called cyanaphores, and both the mantarin fish and 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:37.520 the closely related psychedelic mandarin called the picturesque dragonette, are 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:44.160 vividly colored fish native to coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:46.560 but then it turns out that some of the sort 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:50.520 of more iconic blue creatures are are not really blue 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.360 at all. For instance, the blue morphoe butterfly, which is 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:58.840 beautiful creature, very picturesque example of blue. This is the one, 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.840 for instance, you've find it in Costa Rica, places like that, 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:05.680 and uh, and there was the famous situation where someone 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.960 forget which publication cinephotographer down to get a picture of one, 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:13.200 and they're actually very difficult to picture, to photograph their 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.160 wings open while they're they're they've landed, and so the 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:19.360 photographer just got a dead one and pinned it up 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.280 and then took the picture and it was there's like 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:23.680 a mild controversy over it, but it's a it's a 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:29.520 very blue looking wing surface. But it turns out that 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.040 you have tiny transparent structures on the surface of their 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:36.520 wings that bounce light in just the right way to 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.960 give them the appearance of this vibrant, rich blue. It's 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:43.360 really brilliant because on one side they're brown, and the 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:45.040 effact that's what you end up getting when you try 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:46.840 to photograph them. Most of the time, you just set 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.440 these brown wings and the effect of it being brown 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.520 on that side is to absorb all the other color 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:56.360 from the other wavelengths, so orange and yellow. And in 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.040 the meantime, on the other side, as you say, it's 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.560 got there was any transparent structures, and that is what 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.760 bounces the light. And of course, as we sort of 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.320 alluded to at the beginning of this, blue is the 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:13.440 wavelength that comes through the best, and so that's what's 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.360 bounced off the most through the atmosphere and off of 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.760 their wings, or at least one side. Now, if you 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.840 doubt this as an optical illusion, as the ultimate optical illusion, 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.160 you could grind up their wings and you would see 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:30.400 that there was not a speck of blue pigment in them, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.760 only brown. If you wanted to grind up that seems terrible, 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:35.960 but yeah, well, ground up butterfly wings. Imagine that's an 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.520 ingredient and in some sort of which is brew I 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:43.120 mean sure, sure, yeah, but yeah, the crazy thing about 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.760 this is it all comes around essentially to meta materials. 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:49.360 You know, we're constantly running across new new studies have 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:51.320 been published new findings where they have some sort of 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.080 crazy new meta material where we're manipulating uh, surface structures 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.560 at a at a very minute level, and in doing so, 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:01.840 we're changing the ability of the substance to you know, 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:06.160 absorb or to shed a substance you know, shed water, 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.800 absorb water, or in the way that admit it manipulates light. 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:11.920 I instantly think back to the Tavanta black that we discussed. 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:14.439 You know, we have this menty materials that make this 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:18.320 this uh, this substance appear the surface appear blacker than 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:23.719 any natural black in our world. And essentially you have 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:26.040 you know, nature has been doing this since time out 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.840 of mind. It's been been working at that that minute 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:34.600 scale to manipulate the way the way that we perceive color. Yeah. 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:38.359 You and I were talking about solar sales earlier, and 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:40.040 we were saying, we're like, we're so proud of ourselves 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:43.960 as humans for creating this this material that can reflect 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:47.200 light and can do a bunch of things in the meantime, 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.960 you have these butterfly wings that are doing the same 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.639 sort of things on this smaller scale, albeit uh for 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.639 different reasons. Now, there's a two thousand and twelve study 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.560 that found that some birds use bubble laced keratin. This 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:03.280 is the same sort of stuff that you find in 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:07.000 human fingernails in the barbs of their feathers, and it 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.119 scatters the light from the feather in a way that 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:14.000 happens to look blue to humans. And Northern Woodlands Magazine 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:16.840 said a simple way to test this out is to 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.680 take a blue feather, hold it up to the sky 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.480 so that's back lit, and with the sunlight streaming through 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.040 the feather rather than bouncing off its surface, the blue 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.840 color vanishes and you just get this sort of drab 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.639 grayish brown. But if you bring the feather down so 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:33.879 that the light bounces off of it and scatters the 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.760 blue wavelengths of light, the feather then appears blue once again, 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:43.119 and this is called structural coloration. You know, then the 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.280 more we study this, the more it seems clear that, 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.520 you know, we have this this naive version of reality 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.600 in which they're just these pure colors, sort of Crayola 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:55.280 understanding of the world. You have all these pure colors 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:59.520 floating around, and some pages are are our color with 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.720 certains and others with other crayons. But it's really it's 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.040 almost like there are no real colors at all. When 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.680 you start breaking it down, it just gets it gets, 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.520 this gets so murky. Well, so when you consider other 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.520 organisms out there, like bees there they are perceiving ultra 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:19.800 violet lights that that we don't um. But yeah, I agree, 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:21.720 it's kind of funny to think of all the things 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:25.040 that are going on that we do not perceive. Because 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.120 I was thinking about again that feather, because you've got 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:32.600 that keratin structure, and there's a layer of melanin and 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.560 that is also working with the So the caratin is 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.800 bouncing off stuff and the melanin is absorbing red and 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.480 yellow wavelengths. So all that is going on, but we 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.600 don't see it. Now, if you want to talk about 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:49.480 a really fantastic blue that occurs in nature, or again 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.960 appears to occur in nature, uh, and we're talking like 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:58.000 supernormal stimuli level of blue, then you have the berry 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:04.719 of the Polia condensed sata plant, which has an exceedingly blue, 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:09.880 like reflectively intense blue that is just more potent than 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.320 any other living creatures. Blue. Yeah, yeah, that's that's what 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.479 uh old Rick Steiner, a physicist says about it. It It 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.280 says that it's reflectivity is really more intense than any 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.320 living thing. And he said most services reflect just a 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.360 small percentage of the light that hits them. However, this 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:31.400 berry reflects thirty of the light. The berry skin itself 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.880 has no pigment, no colored cells, or I should astric 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:39.199 that um. But all the cells are coiled in the 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.159 sort of twist, and the cells form sheets just like 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:44.560 the skin of an onion, and that allows light to 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:47.160 filter down through the layers in a way that creates 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.000 again that structural coloration that I was talking about with 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.399 the feather. And there's just a few cells in the 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.560 berry skin that do reflect other colors, and that is 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:02.119 what gives the fruit what Center calls a pick selated glow. Wow, 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:04.240 so you have you have a few pigments in there, 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:06.840 but then most of it is just completely structural color. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:08.720 You look at this thing again, you think of it 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:12.399 in Crayola terms, and you think, wow, that that berry 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:15.080 is really painted with a nice blue. But there's there's 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:19.440 it's it's mostly just a matter of structurally altering the 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:23.000 way that the lights playing with it. Yeah, and there's 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:24.680 a good reason for this too. I mean, this is 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:28.840 a very tiny berry, so in a sense, it needs 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.119 to do this. It needs to be able to reflect 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:34.520 more white so that it can have the sort of 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:38.440 brilliant blue that as a beacon two birds to come 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.080 and eat it and spread it, spread the seeds. It's 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.439 it's basically like the it's the smaller business that has 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:47.639 blown its entire advertising budget on a really catchy Super 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:50.320 Bowl at Yeah, I was gonna say it's a snapple 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.639 of sodas. Maybe I'm not sure if that fits. All Right, 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:55.560 we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.679 we will discuss more about the color blue, uh, particularly 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:10.840 how plays into your eyes. All right, we're back, And 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.080 before we talk about the color blue of eyes and 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.480 and whether it actually even exists, we should talk about 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:21.400 the blue sky and whether it actually exists. Right, Yeah, 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:26.439 you get into this discussion. He's the sky actually really blue? 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:28.879 And where do we even get that idea? Is it 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:31.280 just something that we we hear about. We hear people 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:33.879 talk about the blue sky, Like didn't I don't remember 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:35.919 telling my son that the guy is blue. Did he 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:37.600 indeed just pick that up from a book where he 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:40.960 sees a more vivid depiction of blue and it looks 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:43.480 like his shirt that he's told as blue. Did somebody 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:46.439 at school say, hey, this guy is blue? Or is 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:49.600 there an innate blueness to the sky? Well, you've probably 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:52.680 heard the explanation before that, because the earth is covered, 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:56.000 you know, with water, that it's the This sky is 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.320 just reflecting that back. But that's not actually what's happening. 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:03.200 Think about the absence of light actually, and think about 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:05.119 what happens when we don't have light up in the 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:07.840 sky when it's dark. You know, you get the stars 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.280 coming out, and the sky appears to be a black 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.320 velvet color because of course we don't have any light 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:16.240 from the sun. But once the sun is up and 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.720 the rays of light play with particles in the air, 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:23.800