Is seeing believing? I used to think like most of us what we see is exactly what is there. I never took into consideration the fact we have a limited range of sight and we never see things at the moment they are happening. What we see are what our eyes are capable of seeing which has already happened. Yes not only is space travel said to be limited by the speed of light, but so is our vision. There is a delay from the time we face something to the time the light from it reaches our eyes. There is also at least one more problem and that is with our brains. Our brains sometime interpret what we are seeing. They fill in what they think are missing pieces to form what we see. It turns out our eyes are very easily fooled. This has been the topic of concern for thousands of years among the intellectuals of the world. We can add another problem to what we see and that is illusions. Aristotle stated “our senses can be trusted, but they can be easily fooled”. One of the things he noticed was if you stare at a waterfall long enough and then shift your gaze upward at the rocks they seem to move.

One has to wonder if animals perceive these things in a manner similar to the way we do. Our eyes are very import tools for observation and when we use them to explore the wonders of the universe are we really seeing what is out there? We know we have found some illusions in space caused by what has become known as a gravity lens. Think of a projector, one that can project objects from one area out to several different areas at once. This is precisely what happens in space. Scientists have noticed stars and galaxies being projected. What we used to think were just more stars and galaxies in some cases turned out to not even be there. They were pure illusions. This means our observations may not be 100 percent reliable. How do we know what we are seeing in deep space is not a projection of an object which is yet undetected? Even our computers can be fooled by illusions. Take a mirage for example when in the heat of the desert a building, city or some such thing appears in the sky which isn’t there. You have to wonder how many weary travelers have been fooled by this.

Could the fact our brains fill in missing parts be used against us? There is so much work being done on weapon’s development I wouldn’t be surprised if some country somewhere is trying to use this trait in a way to fool soldiers on the battlefield or fool civilian populations. Perhaps an invading army might someday be able to make themselves look like nothing more than the surrounding area? This could become the ultimate camouflage. I don’t know of any work being done to see if we are more or less prone to misinterpreting what we see as we get older, aside from looking into diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Dementia. The brain is a strange thing and people tend to believe things about it which may not be true, but are widespread ideas. One of those things is our brains decrease in mental skills as we get older. It is true it takes an older person more time to judge and their memory may not be as sharp, but some mental skills do improve with age such as vocabulary, judging character, wisdom and settling conflicts.

Did you ever hear we have five senses? Of course you did, but unfortunately this is incorrect since we have more than just five senses. We also have a sense of balance, temperature, acceleration, time and proprioception, which is the sense of how are bodies are positioned. If we had some of the abilities of some animals we could truly be super humans. Imagine being able to see in the ultraviolet like some birds or being able to detect electrical fields like sharks do. Even an increased sense of smell like dogs have would make us even more super. One thing many of brains don’t do is actually see the world as it is. I am not talking about the physical world, but rather the political and social one. We all look at the same thing and yet we all don’t agree on what we are seeing. Why is that? Don’t we all have similar brains? If our brains are like computers why don’t they all reach similar conclusions? The answer is easy, our brains are not like computers even though we are constantly being told they are. There is no memory bank which fills up or inputs and outputs. When each of us look at the world we do it in a slightly different way from some other people, thus we reach a different conclusion about how the world operates.

How can we be sure what we observe is actually what is there? For example right now black holes are a hot topic. These objects are said to exist in space and have a tremendous gravitational force. We can’t actually see them, because scientists claim nothing, not even light can escape from them and yet one was caught ejecting something. If we had the ability to perceive them some other way we might find there is a lot more to them than we suspect. Perhaps if we had the ability to see gravity waves or electrical impulses or some other invisible energy it would enlighten us tremendously. One of the problems is we may not be able to handle too much stimulation. If the amount of data increases too much our brains might revolt in some way.

Since we really do not know what we can’t see, we have no way of adjusting for this yet. There could be so much we are missing in the universe. This brings me to one last point. If indeed there is other intelligent life in the universe will they be able to detect a lot more about the universe and their surroundings than we can? We might be looked on and pitied as the race with limited perception. On the other hand we might have better perception than some other races. As we evolve perhaps so will our perception of the things around us. Science tells us we are mutating and who knows what abilities we may gain in the future.