The source of darkness???

[Question]

I know darkness is just the absents of light.

 

 

But where does darkness come from, and why dark.

 

I am sorry if this sounds like a strange question.

 

 

I wonder if darkness can even be measured.

[infamous]

I know darkness is just the absents of light.

 

 

But where does darkness come from, and why dark.

Ask your self this question:

If there were no light present, what would we observe if not darkness??

 

I am sorry if this sounds like a strange question.

It surely is a strange question but don't be sorry, I've seen stranger at this forum.

 

 

I wonder if darkness can even be measured.

I believe that if one eliminates all visable light, and for that matter, all electromagnetic radiation of any kind, one would have 100% darkness. Anything less would fall somewhere between that and zero darkness. That brings up another question however; What would it take to reach zero darkness. Logically the answer would be infinite light, which of course does not exist. So in reality, it may be a true statement that some degree of darkness is always present???

 

BTW, welcome to Hypography Question.........................enjoy

[Boerseun]

Not such a silly question at all, and goes far to show our human chauvinisms!

 

If you switch off the lights, you see blackness all round. Why black? Think of it for a while...

If it was any other colour, say, orange, your question would've been "Why is darkness orange?" and nobody would've been any the wiser.

 

The absence of waves falling in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, appears to our (human) eyes as being black - but that's not to say it doesn't look green to a gila monster...

[HydrogenBond]

Darkness that human's percieve it is the abscence of light in the visual spectrum. Even in darkness, there may still be infrared, microwave, radiowaves, etc.., that some type of sensory system would see as light. Take away all of these and one has a total darkness void of energy, which may not exist anywhere within the finite universe.

[Jay-qu]

Ask your self this question:

What would it take to reach zero darkness. Logically the answer would be infinite light..

 

By this do you mean that having infinite light that at any one point there was an infinite amount of photons that could all destructively interfere with one another to produce darkness...or something :Waldo: please explain

[Qfwfq]

Black is what we call the colour of total darkness.

[pie]

Darkness acts like a vacuum, because anywhere there is darkness light is trying to penetrate into it.

 

Darkness is sounded by light, so there is light in the center of darkness. - A type of cold black hole exsist in darkness that draws light from all sides.

 

So there is no such thing as darkness in the universe, - Everywhere one looks there should be light in all directions.

[Docalex007]

To us, complete darkness is lack of EM visible light or wavelengths that our eye receptors can detect. However, even when we think its completely dark, there is still a small amount of visible light that can be amplified by things such as night vision.

 

Your question of "the source of darkness???" is indeed an improper question.

There is no source of "darkness", rather its the lack of a source, its the absence of EM radiation.

[pgrmdave]

Darkness doesn't exists. Look at it this way - when you turn on a flashlight in a dark room, it sends out light, rather than absorbs the darkness.

[Jay-qu]

if you say that darkness is a lack of EMR you couldnt tell from a distant point whether it is dark or not because the EMR has to be coming in your direction to detect it

[CraigD]

if you say that darkness is a lack of EMR you couldnt tell from a distant point whether it is dark or not because the EMR has to be coming in your direction to detect it

Correct, although special conditions must exist to prevent any EMR from coming your way.

 

Common special conditions that prevent you from telling if a remote location has any light are lightproof containers (eg: the refrigerator door, which prevents us from confirming that the little light in there does indeed stay off) and coherent radiation (eg: LASER pointers, which you can’t see unless there’re reflective particles in the air, or you can see the point where they’re pointing).

 

Big, bright distant things, like stars and galaxies, are much harder to obscure.

[Docalex007]

if you say that darkness is a lack of EMR you couldnt tell from a distant point whether it is dark or not because the EMR has to be coming in your direction to detect it

 

 

Yes, thats true. However I am speaking in relation to our perception of darkness. For us the distant point would register darkness although it may very well be false.

 

If some bright object were to appear in our universe and we had a direct free line of sight to the object it would still be invisible to us. Therefore, we could not detect this object in any way and would be dark.