Thursday, February 25, 2010

My mind was just blown

I'm up late working on a research paper assigned to our class. My topic is on Low level laser therapy and wound healing. It's actually pretty fascinating. I've had to sort through gobs of research on the topic and I'm trying to gather a big picture. It's all broken down into specifics of laser type, wavelengths, energies and stuff as well as it's effects on various tissues and wounds (or lack thereof). When it comes to powerful radiation it's the more destructive, ionizing, free-radical creating bands like UV and X-ray that take top spots. Even Infrared gets a lot of credit for the perception of heat we get from it. Visible light has some nifty effects, but outside of vision it doesn't get much credit for molecular effects. As I am finding out, visible light does some pretty crazy stuff, like regulating which genes get turned on and regulating all sorts of biochemical stuffs, the vast most of it apparently beneficial and supportive of life. The most common frequencies I'm coming across in these studies are in the range of 632nm or 830nm, which happen to be the frequencies made by convenient Helium Neon lasers and the like.

This may seem way out there and Doc Brown-ish (Jumping Gigawatts!), but I got curious, what color is 632nm? It's orange-red. That's peculiar. Why would that have such crazy benefits to us and our tissues? Oh wait, what wavelength is strongest from the sun? Right about the color put out by Hydrogen at 650nm but it puts out the most of its energy in that general range of orange. Woa!

We're floating around this universe that's flooded with all sorts of radiations. X-Rays are generally destructive in appreciable amounts. UV rays send electrons flying about. Infrared rays tend to speed up the movement of whole molecules, speeding up molecular reactions. Too much infrared (too hot) and biological systems as we know them quit working or work so fast that it can't be properly controlled or used. So there's our Sun. A nice medium-sized star that puts out the majority of it's radiation within the visible spectrum. A nice middle range for life to flourish. And under this unique spectrum flourish it does! And our systems are SOOOO adapted to it that our primary source of information comes from the visible spectrum, our systems are put together in such a way that the peak of this visible light we get is beneficial to us-- even dependent on it--, and our planet is put together so perfectly to filter out most of the destructive other radiation.

This may still not make much sense, but the gist of it to me is that this universe was created for life to thrive. Life is not some niche that has squeezed its tiny foothold into the universe, but the sole purpose of this universe is to support life by properly supporting the atomic properties conducive to life. Of course it can be argued the other way, but my own personal experiences and research, backed up by theindependent experiences, studies and research of millions of others show that there is a God and that he loves us and that his greatest work is to bestow life into this universe.

Now back to my paper. I want to get this thing done tonight even if I have to stay up all night. I don't have much demanding my energies tomorrow so I'll be ok and it'll be really nice to have it out of the way and still have a day to refine it before Friday morning. Wish me luck.

Update (5 min after original posting): The burning of organic material (wood, wax, oil, etc) tends to burn at 1000 to 1100 degrees Celsius which also happens to give off mostly deep orange light!

2 comments:

Erik said...

Intelligent design...what are the chances?

Debi Lassen said...

"My mind is blown" that I have such intelligent children! When Hans was in kindergarten, his teacher would tell the kids in her class to "kiss their brain" and so they would kiss their hand and touch their head. It was her way of teaching them how wonderful it was to have a good brain. Christian..."kiss your brain"! Thank you for exposing me to things I would probably never be exposed to.