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Man able to view ultraviolet light after eye surgery (komar.org)
13 points by kmfrk on June 8, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments


The painter Monet had cataract surgery near the end of his life, which removed the lens from one eye entirely and allowed him to see ultraviolet light. He continued to paint, and his renditions of white flowers became blue-tinted.


This is very cool. Any chance humanity will gradually evolve into being able to see UV light and other wavelengths? Well, one is allowed to dream.


With bionic eyes or experimental spider eyeball transplant? Maybe. From what I've heard the protective membrane exists to protect your receptors from UV, damaging it allows UV to affect your receptors (probably damaging them).

NOTE: I could be wrong and UV doesn't do anything to receptors.


There is no significant evolutionary advantage (for humans) to seeing UV light, so it will, at best, be a rare instance, if it's even genetically possible for something like that to happen.

Any advantages there may be gained from this will just be provided by an external set of glasses or visors.

Maybe Google Glass will provide something like this in 20 years, but otherwise, I highly doubt it.


> Maybe Google Glass will provide something like this in 20 years, but otherwise,

Oh god, I'd kill for a real set of augmented goggles. By augmented I don't mean ads over my field of vision, I mean like the ability to see magnetic lines, or any range of photon radiation or ability to zoom in and take picture of far away objects.




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