Can humans see ultraviolet light?
Ultraviolet has very short and energetic wavelengths that are shorter than violet on the visible spectrum. But can people see UV?
The colors of the rainbow are all around us, but so are hues that most of us can't see, including ultraviolet — a wavelength that eludes many humans but, surprisingly, many animals can perceive.
Ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths are smaller than those on the visible spectrum, but can people see them? The answer, it turns out, depends on how old you are and whether your eyes contain UV-filtering lenses, experts told Live Science.
First, it's important to understand how sight works. In the back of the eye, the retina has photoreceptors that sense light and send signals about the wavelengths they detect through the optic nerve to the brain, which interprets them as color.
In fact, our blue-detecting cones can detect some UV light. However, the lens — the clear, curved structure in the eye that focuses light onto the retina to help us see more clearly — filters out UV light, so the high-energy wavelength never actually reaches the cones, Michael Bok, a biologist who studies vision at Lund University in Sweden, told Live Science.
