Life glow

I do not think it will come as a surprise to those who are familiar with this column that I am a professional skeptic. I should be or else, you should not trust this science column. First and foremost in science is a respect for evidence. I try to explain to my readers what the evidence is. Then I try to explore what the evidence may mean. This does not mean that those that do not require evidence are not important. Many things that do not require evidence are important; they just cannot be considered science.

This week, I came across a very interesting experiment. Interesting because first, it deals with something tied to what psychics claim as “auras” and also because I used to dismiss outright any claim that has to do with glow-in-the dark humans. Aura readers typically claim that their gift allows them to see auras of people and as such determine, depending on the color of the aura, what diseases those people have. Those reflect very big leaps in reasoning that would require a scientist to denounce her training before she can brand it as meaningful. But what is good about a skeptical mind is that it can change, upon a weighing of evidence. This experiment did change my mind but not in the way that most of you might think.

In the July 16 issue of PloS One, Japanese scientists led by Masaki Kobayashi of the Tohoku Institute of Technology, published the result of their study wherein they proved that living human bodies emit light, and that this light even varies in intensity at different times of the day. Apparently, past researches have shown that living creatures all emit light but this light, while it may be within the frequency of visible light, lacks the intensity that could register in naked human eyes. So yes, if “aura” will be redefined to mean “light 1,000 times less intense than that which the naked eye can detect,” then aura it is. Until these aura readers can match the sensitivity of the cameras used in this experiment, their claims of seeing light in living humans with their naked eye, shall remain a mystery and a bulls-eye for targeted skepticism.

This light was detected by very sensitive cameras — cameras that can detect single photons (particles of light) and they were focused on naked-chested men in very dark rooms at different parts of the day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days. The faces even glowed more relative to other parts of the body. The scientists speculated that it may be because the face is more “pigmented” than the rest of the body, being more exposed to sunlight. It is this pigmentation with its fluorescing elements that give off this more intense glow.

It also turned out that the bodies glowed in different intensities throughout the day with its dimmest at 10 a.m. and its brightest at 4 p.m. and gradually dimming after that. This made the researchers think that the glow differences had to do with our circadian rhythm which in turn is tied to our metabolism. But that is far as this study goes, it has not proven which light is tied with any medical condition, if at all. This experiment opens up the need for further studies to see how we can make use of the light we see from living humans. How are they tied to health and disease? Until these links are firmly established, all we have now is evidence that we do glow in the dark. It is a really awesome fact but it is not a substitute for a medical check on what is ailing you.

The light detected in the study is also different from heat (infrared). In fact, the reading of heat from body parts did not match the light being detected in that body part. This means that just because you are glowing intensely does not mean you are also proportionately hot. So this experiment is not a validation of all the alternative medicines involving heat claiming to cure everything from psychosis to cancer.

This science puts at least a deep coma, to claims of aura readers. But I hope artists who deal with light appreciate this experiment so that they can render their own take on what it means to glow in the dark. I think artists could do wonderful works based on this finding. Imagine, we are not just creatures that could take light (we have about 100 million photoreceptors in our body), we also give it off!

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