Why is the blackness of my room darker when my eyes are open than when they are closed? When falling asleep last night in my pitch black room, I noticed that when I closed my eyes there was a grey-ness, instead of the same black that I saw when my eyes were open. There were no prominent light sources in my room and the windows were entirely blacked out. Please explain!
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I can’t specifically answer your question, but there’s a phenomenon called phosphene which describes how our visual system doesn’t stop working even when denied light.
I would fathom a guess that when your eyes are open in a pitch black room, it may not be as ‘pitch’ as you think, allowing barely detectable light to stimulate your eyes. When you close your eyes, effectively blocking light and creating a truer ‘pitch black’, resulting in the phosphene phenomenon to occur. This might be why it appears ‘brighter’.
But that’s just a completely uneducated guess.
EDIT: Forgot to add that phosphene is the little lights and flashes of colour when you close your eyes. Same as when you rub your eyes, etc.
Also typo.
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