A related anecdote: A few years ago, I asked my friend, a neuroscientist specializing in vision, why it’s sometimes painful to look at the sky. After confirming that it’s unrelated to cloud cover but vaguely correlated with the seasons, he suggested that it might be that I’m sensitive to the polarization of light, but said that this was unlikely since mammals in general are supposedly not capable of detecting it. Polarized glasses are cheap, though, so I tried them, and they entirely fixed the problem—notably, regular sunglasses do not—indicating that that is probably the case.
Even more interestingly, I discovered that some significant parts of my visual experience were related to polarization: Detecting the rotation of distant reflective objects (panes of glass, leaves) is helped by it, for one. More significantly, perceiving how far away objects are is affected by it: It’s easier for me to tell how far away a small, relatively still object is without the glasses, but also much easier for me to tell how fast a large object is approaching with them, and I find crossing busy roads to be much less stressful that way. I also find certain kinds of reflective surfaces confusing with the glasses, but entirely sensible without them.
The human eye is slightly sensitive to the polarization of light. See Haidinger’s brush, which is a yellowish bowtie shaped pattern some people can see in the center of their visual field when looking at the sky while facing away from the sun.
A related anecdote: A few years ago, I asked my friend, a neuroscientist specializing in vision, why it’s sometimes painful to look at the sky. After confirming that it’s unrelated to cloud cover but vaguely correlated with the seasons, he suggested that it might be that I’m sensitive to the polarization of light, but said that this was unlikely since mammals in general are supposedly not capable of detecting it. Polarized glasses are cheap, though, so I tried them, and they entirely fixed the problem—notably, regular sunglasses do not—indicating that that is probably the case.
Even more interestingly, I discovered that some significant parts of my visual experience were related to polarization: Detecting the rotation of distant reflective objects (panes of glass, leaves) is helped by it, for one. More significantly, perceiving how far away objects are is affected by it: It’s easier for me to tell how far away a small, relatively still object is without the glasses, but also much easier for me to tell how fast a large object is approaching with them, and I find crossing busy roads to be much less stressful that way. I also find certain kinds of reflective surfaces confusing with the glasses, but entirely sensible without them.
The human eye is slightly sensitive to the polarization of light. See Haidinger’s brush, which is a yellowish bowtie shaped pattern some people can see in the center of their visual field when looking at the sky while facing away from the sun.
Huh, neat!
Interesting!