The colour spectrum

The visible spectrum is the electromagnetic portion of the spectrum that is visible to the human eye. These colours are made up of different wavelengths and frequencies....so what is the rest of the spectrum that we don't see?

Some of the other lights that we don't see are infrared, radio waves, ultraviolet etc. The BBC recently did an interesting documentary highlighting this called Out of sight along with other interesting documentaries revealing that what we see can actually be very different from what is there.

A good example of how things can be different in different lighting is the honeybees. Honeybees have ultraviolet vision and so the world around them looks very different to our own. As a result of this flowers purposely have patterns that show through ultraviolet lighting in order to attract the bees to pollenate.In addition to this we also learnt through infrared that bees have a very specific set up within the hive. What initially looks like a scrambled mess is actually an organized process to raise the young. Under infrared light specific bees are shown to be warmer than others and these bees are keeping the young warm. Other bees will bring honey to feed and keep the energy levels of these bees up in order to stay warm. Something that would never be known without looking through infrared.

Apparently if all the invisible waves that we cant see were aligned along eachother they would go so far as to reach all the way to the sun! That's a lot of wave lengths! All around us are constant waves that we don't see, in particular radio waves as everyone these days have mobile phones.

Imagine all the light along this rainbow that we can't see....