
Modelling explains why blues and greens are nature's brightest colors - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-blues-greens-brightest-colous-nature.html
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cmehdy
Am I misunderstanding the title there or is it simply made to be catchy but
wrong?

The actual beginning of the article says this:

"Researchers have shown why intense, pure red colors in nature are mainly
produced by pigments, instead of the structural color that produces bright
blue and green hues."

So the research has to do with the origin of different colors in animals, not
"why blue and green are nature's brightest colors". A quick look at a Scarlet
Ibis or a Poison Frog should make it clear that opposing red to blue in a
battle for "nature's brightest colors" would be an irrelevant endeavour
anyway, and that isn't what the researchers have been doing in the first
place.

~~~
herf
Yes agreed, they say "structural color" (film interference) only works for
blues and greens, and you need pigments for oranges and reds. Title should be
changed.

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Syzygies
Digital photography still uses my father's filter
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter)).
How did it survive? He made an inevitable choice, this is bit like asking why
the number two is so prevalent. Frame the question right (as he did, preparing
twenty years for what looks like ten minutes of work), and this grid is the
unique answer:

"Checkerboard half the squares green, turn your head, and checkerboard what's
left red and blue."

What's most striking here is the prevalence of green squares. With a honeycomb
pattern, one could equally distribute RGB cells. However, this would be less
efficient in hardware and software. John von Neumann considered base 3
computing, but settled on binary, for a similar efficiency advantage.

From what my Dad understood of the human eye, he decided that green was the
best proxy for black and white detail, so he favored green. Digital
photography evolved in harmony with the human eye, just as eyes evolved in
harmony with the objects of our vision. None of us take in FM radio with our
eyes, and few animals see red. Some speculate that our corner of the mammal
world sees red to spot ripe fruit, nature's pigment playground.

~~~
jsjohnst
> Digital photography still uses my father's filter

Are you David by chance? If so, I’ve read several of your papers and just
wanted to say thanks!

~~~
Syzygies
Yup. I owe any sense of simplicity in my work to my Dad.

------
Someone
_“The researchers modeled the optical response and color appearance of
nanostructures, as found in the natural world. They found that saturated, matt
structural colors cannot be recreated in the red region of the visible
spectrum, which might explain the absence of these hues in natural systems.”_

Sounds like circular reasoning to me: “Red colors cannot be recreated in
nature because (according to our modeling) nano structures found in nature
cannot produce them”. What do I overlook?

~~~
srtjstjsj
What do you mean? They found that red is impossible, which explains it's
absence.

If red were possible, you'd have a different answer, possibly related to
vision systems.

~~~
Someone
That red isn’t possible with the nanostructures found in nature doesn’t imply
no such nanostructures could have evolved.

_If_ structures that produce red can be made, the question to answer would be
why they haven’t evolved.

