From: Ron Kean (ronkean@juno.com)
Date: Sat Aug 07 1999 - 21:03:30 MDT
On Sat, 07 Aug 1999 04:41:15 -0400 "Michael S. Lorrey" <mike@lorrey.com>
writes:
>
> I would imagine that people who claim to see auras actually have
> defective UV filters in their corneas....which could explain why
> people
> struck by lightning report such abilities after their electric
> experience, as the lightning bolt's high levels of UV emissions
> likely
> burns out some or all of the UV filters.
>
> Mike
>
If the few people who claim to see auras are seeing something which
objectively exists, as opposed to something which exists only
subjectively, and if that objective something is a UV halo or aura, then
it should be possible to detect the aura using artificial UV detection
and imaging equipment. If that were possible, some investigator would
have discovered and reported it by now. Since that has apparently not
happened, I can only conclude that there is no such thing as a detectable
objective UV aura.
In theory the human body emits electromagnetic radiation over a wide
frequency range, including radio, infrared, and even UV. That is not
fundamentally because the human body is alive, or is human, but simply
because of its surface temperature and surface electromagnetic
characteristics. A human body at rest puts out about 50 watts of
electromagnetic power, mostly in the infrared. Above the frequency in
the infrared where that radiated power has its spectral peak, the power
falls off as the frequency increases. Since the human body originates no
detectable visible light due to its surface temperature, it must
originate even less UV due to its surface temperature. No special
equipment is needed to demonstrate this; the dark-adapted eye is very
sensitive to light and can detect a flash consisting of as few as half a
dozen photons, providing those photons enter the pupil and are focused on
a sufficiently small spot on the retina.
And even if the human body were to originate copious quantities of UV, it
would still not have an objective UV aura for the same reason that a
light bulb does not have an objective aura. When one looks at a bright
light one is likely to see what looks like an aura, halo, or nimbus, but
that is caused by clouding in the eye's optical path, something which
commonly increases with age and in severe cases is called cataracts.
While it is unlikely that auras are objectively real, it is possible they
are subjectively real, for some few observers. If so, what use are they?
If an observer of an aura could determine from the aura the state of
health of the individual whose aura is observed, as some have claimed,
that would again raise the issue of whether auras are somehow objectively
real. But if an aura observer were able to diagnose patients with some
success, it still would not necessarily indicate that auras are
objectively real, because the information could have been obtained in
other ways. An experienced doctor, for instance, can often derive much
information about the state of health of an individual merely by looking
at the person, observing the person's appearance and behavior. But he
doesn't see an aura.
Ron Kean
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