The straw man argument is that you claim/imply that someone claims that the laws of nature will always be the same, and so forth, then you say that that's not a possible claim to make. But nobody claims any such thing.

If the underlying intent behind the question is: "Why should I care about what science tells us about nature?", then "Because it works," is the best possible answer (even without the "bitches").

If the underlying intent behind the question is: "Why should I accept that science will always work?", then the only correct answer is, "You shouldn't accept that kind of claim from a scientist or anyone."

If the underlying intent behind the question is: "How is it reasonable to move from a probability to an absolute certainty?", then again, the only correct answer is, "It isn't reasonable at all, and when we talk of scientific "truths", that's a shorthand way of saying, "based on past observations, the calculated odds of such-and-such being true are so high that we feel confident saying it's true, but are open to the possibility that it's false." "

Nobody in that room or this asked why there is uniformity in nature, or why certain properties of nature have appeared constant as long as we've been observing them, so that's not "the essential question". We don't know the answer, and as far as I know, science has little or nothing to say on the matter of why they are consistent. It is only our consistent observation that no matter how we have tested things, there are certain properties that have never ever changed, like the speed of a photon, the charge of an electron, or the pull of gravity.

Science has worked incredibly well so far within its domain, so I'm curious why you think there's any reason to even raise the possibility it won't continue to work in the future.

The article he links for support is the same one I found, and it points out that the rods in both human and frog retinas can detect a single photon... but in humans there is a neural filter to prevent us detecting a single photon, we require 5-9 photons within 100ms to detect a flash.

I seriously doubt that frog vision works as he described in the original video, but clearly there could be some creature out there for whom his hypothesis was correct... and either way it was quite a fun talk, even if one has to substitute a robotic frog for total verisimilitude.

He says in the comments that he addressed this on his walk, but that the audio of that part was unusable!

I have found an article on frog and toad eyes and optic systems, hosted on David Olmsted's neurocomputing.org.

It still doesn't directly address the claim that they can detect single photons in the way this video suggests.

Hmm... now you've made me curious too. I have found a few interesting pages, but nothing specifically about frog vision apart from mentions that it's sensitive.

• How Stuff Works has a How frogs work article.
  
• The Whole Frog Project provides a virtual frog for high school biology students, based on MRI data, mechanical sectioning, and some software to allow visualising of the anatomical structures of the intact animal.
  
• The UW Sea grant site has a frogs page with resources for kids + teachers that has an origami frog (among other things).
  

I'm not quite as sure about the single photon claim. I found a Physicsworld.com article from September 2012 talking about using a single rod cell from a frog eye being used as an extremely sensitive detector which is able to detect a single photon, but according to the original Usenet Physics FAQ (I cite an updated version hosted at math.ucr.edu) human retinas can also respond to a single photon, but have a neural filter to block the signal unless 5 to 9 photons arrive within less than 100 ms.

References

Julie Schnapf, "How Photoreceptors Respond to Light", Scientific American, April 1987

S. Hecht, S. Schlaer and M.H. Pirenne, "Energy, Quanta and vision." Journal of the Optical Society of America, 38, 196-208 (1942)

D.A. Baylor, T.D. Lamb, K.W. Yau, "Response of retinal rods to single photons." Journal of Physiology, Lond. 288, 613-634 (1979)

So if a single photon from a distant star passes through the slit-like pupils of the frog's eye the question is: which slit does it pass through? And what retina does it impinge on?

This is actually a trick question, easily answered by the experimental results of the famous double-slit experiment.

Also, I'm disappointed. I was hoping to learn about the optical/visual system of frogs.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

>> ^deathcow:
But those photons aren't man made.

Neither are the photons reflecting off of the Great Wall. So, by your logic, nothing man-made can be seen from any distance.


touche

>> ^deathcow:

But those photons aren't man made.


Neither are the photons reflecting off of the Great Wall. So, by your logic, nothing man-made can be seen from any distance.

>> ^deathcow:

But those photons aren't man made.


Only converted !

But those photons aren't man made.

>> ^mxxcon:

I don't know if this should be considered "FX" if it was done manually...

That's a silly condition to require. Or do you think there's an AI somewhere that sneaks photon torpedoes, Na'vi, Tyrannosaurus Rex, patroni, and fireball spells into otherwise effect-free films?

Lots of that light has to do with the fact that not only is it instantly VERY hot , but that there is ALSO ionized gases that get created into a plasma that doesn't last very long (due to energy or heat absorption speed), but it will light up really good with the color all depending on the material hit (carbon based stuff as said above, so the photons you see are from the "energy range" released in the energy exchange through the atmospheric gases and tree/pole/whatever hit).

Tags for this video have been changed from 'shadow, weigh, how much, vsauce, light, energy, surface, weight' to 'shadow, weigh, how much, vsauce, light, energy, surface, weight, photonic boom' - edited by messenger

upvote for PHOTONIC BOOM!
suddenly Street Fighter II makes a lot more sense.

>> ^braschlosan:

>> ^Jinx:
but colour is an invention of our brains anyway? Is yellow a specific wavelength or is yellow what our brain says is yellow whether its red+green together, or "true" yellow.

Either way the light output by your monitor is not 580nm like your brain is telling you but rather an even mix of 650nm and 510nm.
If our eyes didn't "fudge" colors in this way we most likely wouldn't have color television (or monitors)


I didn't read his post like that, maybe he's asking for a definition of yellow because as our cones are basically wavelength filters for photons whilst our brain interprets a message of "hey i caught something of this intensity" from each of them, what is this "yellow" that we all use and think we know what it means? It will eventually come down to the resolution of the eye; each photon from each source will be coming in from a different angle into our eye, by extremely small amounts - the smallest thing we can resolve is where our brain says "ok, i think that's coming from the same place; it's not red and blue separately but yellow."

It'd be the same if you have a green and red patterned circular board and spun it really fast. Our eyes effectively have a "framerate", a point where we see something as motion. Play a game and limit to 1 fps, then increase in say 5's and before 30 you should start to feel motion rather than stuttering frames, then as you keep going you can't see stuttering anymore, it's just all motion. Our eyes have something similar, we used to do it in science. My dad was head of physics and he stuck a ROYGBIV patterned board on a black and decker drill and when it was up to speed it looked white.

So if something registers as yellow to our brains, is that not yellow? We have no direct access to our cones, we just interpret the signals. If all we had were light sensitive cells everything would be one colour and no colour at the same time.

That's what the post meant to me and it's a great point really even if it's just an excuse for sciencey discussion! If yellow is defined as a range of wavelengths of light, he's right to say it isn't yellow, but i doubt many people think of yellow in that sense. Having said all that, the video was actually interesting and informative and i enjoyed watching it, and this is probably a philosophical question for others to bother with.

PS.
Bert and Ernie, Simpsons, Smurfs, South Park, Turtles? Not sure about B&E though.