Could the be hotter colors than blue, and if so, do we know what they would be?

116 views

For instance, could a star be hot enough to pass blue and become purple or green? If it is impossible for something to get that hot without exploding or imploding, are there theories as to which colors they would reach if they could?

In: 0

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

As far as the colors of the galaxy go, we humans can only perceive a sliver that we call the visible light spectrum. Photons are weird, but essentially, we can perceive radiation within certain wavelengths. Radiation is itself a rippling wave sent through the fabric of reality, and you experience it all the time. Beyond the visible light spectrum, waves become infrared or ultraviolet, referring to being either below red, or faster than violet in frequency. Our human eyes simply aren’t equipped to sense color outside of that range, so the question you’re asking is, in a sense, “can you imagine a new color?” I can’t.

However, we do have ways of detecting things that our human eyes can’t see. For example, we can use lenses to filter for certain kinds of wavelengths, produce them as things that we *can* see*,* and grant ourselves other kinds of vision by wearing goggles. We don’t see heat, but we understand a map of heat from blue to red. That kind of thing. We use that to show things in celestial bodies that we could not see with our naked eye. So, you wouldn’t see it, and it wouldn’t have a color you know of, but I’ll go ahead and tell you of something both extremely hot and extremely cold. Black holes are near absolute zero internally, because they compress so hard. However, right at the event horizon of a black hole, where matter is being moved at near the speed of light, black holes are surrounded by incredible heat. You’d never be able to see it, because any light it produced wouldn’t escape the black hole’s gravity.

Many celestial bodies produce radiation that is well-beyond the visible light spectrum. You may be interested in quasars.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.