Would that mean there could be more skin colors? (This thought just popped in my head and I am now going crazy).
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Objects often reflect more than one color — or more accurately, they can reflect a wider range of light than our eyes can detect.
There aren’t really “more” skin colors, not in the way I think you mean, as the colors that skin can be all fall within the range of light that we can see.
Think of light as music.
The 3 colors humans can see are 3 microphones tuned to different notes on the full spectrum of music, from extremely low to extremely high pitched. Other animals have differently tuned microphones so they sample a different range.
We have created sensors to sample various ranges beyond the capacities of our own eyes so they are different “colors.” All of these are only sampling a portion of the full range of light and music.
“Color” is sort of an overloaded term that can mean one of several different related things.
There is a spectrum of light. Objects do, or don’t, reflect each possible wavelength of light to different degrees. For example, an object might reflect all light below a wavelength of 500 nm, while absorbing all light above 500 nm, or maybe it reflects light close to 600 nm and absorbs more and more the further from 600 nm you get. In this sense, the “color” of an object is a curve describing how it reflects every possible wavelength of light, which takes an infinite number of numbers to describe.
Human perception, on the other hand, is dictated by how that light stimulates three types of cell in our eye (so-called “L”, “M”, and “S” cone cells, which are most sensitive to reddish, yellowish, and bluish light respectively but have some overlap). If you know how much the light stimulates each of those cells – that is, you know three numbers, technically called *tristimulus values* – you know what “color” it is. The “reflect all below 500 nm and absorb all above 500 nm” object above would stimulate S cells a lot, M cells a little, and L cells almost not at all – that is, it would appear a deep blue-violet. The “mostly reflects around 600 nm” would stimulate L a lot, M moderately, and S very little, and would appear orange.
Since the first definition of color (the how-much-of-each-wavelength-does-it-reflect definition) provides a much larger range of possibilities than the second one (the amount it stimulates each of our cells), there are many possible “colors” in the first sense for each “color” in the second sense. That is, there are different mixes of light that both appear the same shade of (say) blue to your eyes, because they result in the same amount of stimulation to each of your cell types.
You would see a color (second sense) for every possible combination of reflected light (first sense), but you wouldn’t always be able to tell the *difference* between those colors.
Finally, not every possible combination of stimuli (color in the second sense) is actually possible. The M and L cells overlap a lot, so you can’t stimulate L a lot without stimulating M a little (if you could, you’d see a color “redder than the reddest possible red”). The only way to experience these colors (second sense) is to somehow mess with the processing in your brain; people who take psychedelic drugs often report seeing new colors that are probably the result of the brain getting a scrambled “lots of L and no M” signal and trying to figure out what the hell to do with it.
After reading the other replies I’m going to take a Crack at it. Imagine light is made up of all sorts of different sized pasta noodles. And the sun is like an angry Italian just throwing pasta everywhere. Well that pasta flys out and hits something, let’s say just say it’s the wall. Now the wall has some pasta shaped holes in it, so some of the pasta goes in the walls holes and disappears. The rest of the pasta bounces off and comes flying back at you, put you only eat Mac n cheese and maybe ravioli, so you gobble up the Mac n cheese and ravioli but totally ignore the fettuccine and the spaghetti and all tbe other noodles. Those noodles are still there, but you only have a taste for mac n cheese. Now an animal like the Mantis Shrimp, well that little guy, he’ll eat all the noodles. Loves em all., can’t get enough. Hope that helps.
>Would that mean there could be more skin colors?
Yes, sorta. Humans can’t see ultraviolet light. But our skin does have pigmentation similar to freckles or even zebra stripes that is not visible to our eyes normally but would be visible if we could see UV light. Google image search for “human skin under uv light” for some examples.
Check out this post on bored panda. It gives a good idea about it
https://www.boredpanda.com/human-vs-bird-vision/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
I’d like to ask, they keep coming up with these new TV’s with more details and colors. At some point we can’t see the difference, I think we are there now. But you gotta sell new TV’s right?
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