I was just thinking about how amazing rainbows are and how lucky we are that we can see them. But I was also wondering if other animals or hypothetical aliens that can see different spectra of light can also see something in the sky or is it just coincidentally just visible light?
In: Biology
Yes, in fact, that’s how infrared light was discovered.
William Hershel was trying to measure the temperature of different wavelengths of light, so he set up a prism and a series of thermometers. The control thermometer was placed next to the one placed in the red light.
To his surprise, the control thermometer shot up much higher than all the others. He placed another control thermometer elsewhere in the room as a sanity check, and determined there was an invisible light that was transmitting heat. He called this light infrared.
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