And why and how does it represent heat unlike other wavelengths of light?
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it isn’t different from any other light.
It carries energy from point A to point B.
Objects produce light (of all colors) by having a temperature. The hotter it is, the more of all light, but also the higher “peak” energy. So a cool object produces a little bit of everything, but mostly radio. Warm it up to what we consider “hot” and it gives more of everything, but peaks in Infrared. And so on.
Infrared does have one general trait other wavelengths don’t have.
Radio and microwave are to long to interact with most atoms and molecules, and pass through.
Infrared tends to have the right amount of energy to interact with many molecular bonds, and so is easily absorbed by living organisms, transfering the energy into the molecules, which vibrate more (which is heat). But the vibration isn’t always enough to actually do much to the molecule.
Higher energy light tends to pass through molecules rather than interact. This is basically a resonance effect, sort of how a musical instrument only makes one note at a time on a string.
So while higher energy light can, and does, transfer the energy into organic material it often triggers more than just vibrations causing it to warm up. It can trigger chemical reactions as the higher energies can actually cause molecules to vibrate hard enough to rip apart, or strip electrons off atoms etc.
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