The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. How do you differentiate?

Originally posted by inimalist
no, thats interesting, I wont pretend I really understand... I do know about electrons and all, but I really don't know how to conceptualize gaining or losing charges or whatever.... sigh

Meh. It's too much to go over.

Originally posted by inimalist
you will never understand how much I love the basal ganglia...

that and the lateral geniculate nucleus...

lolz

Holy shit, you're so consistent! 😆 You have no idea how consistent you are.

I made fun of it by making a sex joke about basal ganglia. You also mentioned lateral geniculate nucleus, before.

Originally posted by inimalist
ontology

or any technical terms that I know people don't understand: lateral geniculate nucleus, thalamo-cortical, basal ganglia, etc

Originally posted by dadudemon
As in, "I'd like to stir up her basal ganglia with my dendrites." awesome

Everything is full circle. pained

Originally posted by inimalist
I'm sorry, let me reword:

the air doesn't reflect light in a way that our visual system is able to perceive, ie: we don't see air because our visual system can't

I suppose I shouldn't talk about light in that way, as I have no idea at all

It's better than that. Air being invisible is an example of Adams' Puddle.

Why can't we see air? Because we evolved to see wavelengths of light that travel through it well. If we had evolved to see extremely short wave light we'd be nearly blind because it gets absorbed within a short distance. Radio waves travel better but you need large detectors to notice them (also I don't think the sun produces as much you wouldn't be able to see details with them).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_electromagnetic_opacity.svg

A very energetic video from Sixty Symbols on some of the physics behind why things are transparent: http://www.sixtysymbols.com/videos/energygap.htm

That video still leaves me wondering why things are opaque to long wavelengths. Wiki makes it sound like that's a macro level thing.