HUMILUMINISCENCE

 

Even Human can show luminescence ! yes they can

 

Ultra-sensitive cameras reveal that our bodies emit tiny amounts of light that are too weak for the human eye to detect. Amazing pictures of "glittering" human bodies have been released by Japanese scientists who have captured the first ever images of human "bioluminescence". Researchers Daisuke Kikuchi and Masaki Kobayashi used a very sensitive CCD camera to observed the upper bodies of the volunteers over a period of days.

 

Their results show that the amount of light emitted follows a 24-hour cycle, at its highest in late afternoon and lowest late at night, and that the brightest light is emitted from the cheeks, forehead and neck. Strangely, the areas that produced the brightest light did not correspond with the brightest areas on thermal images of the volunteers' bodies.

 

The light is a thousand times weaker than the human eye can perceive. At such a low level, it is unlikely to serve any evolutionary purpose in humans – though when emitted more strongly by animals such as fireflies, glow-worms and deep-sea fish, it can be used to attract mates and for illumination. Human body is glimmering with light of intensity weaker than 1/1000 times the sensitivity of naked eyes (Kobyashi M 2003, Sauermann et al. 1999). By using a sensitive charge-coupled-device (CCD) camera with the ability to detect light at the level of a single photon,  imaging the spontaneous photon emission from human bodies (Kobyashi M 2003) the central area around the mouth and the cheeks was higher than the lateral area and the orbits. Furthermore, the photon emission intensity on the face and upper body appeared to display time-dependent changes. They plotted total photon emission intensity over the body and face against time, Photon emission was weak in the morning, increased in the afternoon and peaked in the late afternoon. These data strongly suggest that there is a diurnal rhythm of photon emission from the human body.

 

Ultraweak biophoton emission was completely different from thermographic images showing surface temperature . High photon emission were detected from the cheeks, followed by the upper neck and the forehead, while high temperature was detected in the supraclavicular lateral neck region, from which photon emission was low. In cheek, the highest level of emission reaches to 3000 photon/s·cm at 16:00 pm.

                              Expression of bioluminescence in human (after Kobyashi,2003)