Kept in your browser only. Nothing is sent to us and no cookie is set.
Home Tags
Everything filed under optics.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Under ordinary light a platypus is plain brown, but under an ultraviolet lamp its fur glows blue-green, and scientists still disagree about whether the glow does anything at all.
Fact-based Odd Places
Grand Prismatic Spring is deep blue in the middle and ringed with green, yellow and orange, and the two halves of that rainbow are made in completely different ways.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
The lantern of a firefly is covered in scales that fit together badly, like wonky roof tiles, and copying that jagged pattern let a lab LED give out up to 55 per cent more light.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
A rainbow is really a full circle of light centred on the shadow of your own head, and the ground hides the bottom of it, which is why you only ever seem to get an arch.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
The stars are not flickering at all: their light is being nudged about by the air above your head, and a planet looks calm for a surprisingly simple reason.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
The eyes of a moth are covered in bumps far too small to see, and copying them helps screens, lenses and solar panels shake off their glare.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
The same sky and the same sunlight give us a blue afternoon and an orange evening, and the difference comes down to how tiny air molecules toss light around.
Fact-based Weird Facts
A chameleon is not a living copy machine for whatever it sits on: its most dazzling colour changes are messages to other chameleons, made with tiny crystals in its skin.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
A rising full moon can look enormous, yet a camera shows it is no wider than when it rides high in the sky, which means the giant moon is being built inside your head.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
A photo records everything from one fixed point, while your eyes see only a small area sharply and your attention picks out what matters, so the picture rarely matches what you saw.