YASID: 3-d slice of 4-d being

[Jerry Friedman]

Hi, all. It seems to me I've read a story where some mysterious and possibly
disgusting thing turns out to be the way a four-dimensional being appears to
our three-dimensional perception, the way a sphere would look like a circle
of changing size to a Flatlander. Maybe it was an old story in a Groff
Conklin anthology or something like that. Ring any bells?

The "pink worms" of people's life histories in Heinlein's "Life-line"
(easier to type than say) are sort of the reverse. I suppose it's possible
my few remaining gray cells are combining "Life-line" and /Flatland/ and who
knows what else.

Also, the friend who I was talking with about this wonders whether anyone
knows any kind of sf where phenomena such as UFOs are three-d manifestations
of higher-dimensional beings.

Thanks in advance.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Mike M]

The Palainians in the Lensman series ( and, indeed, the inhabitants of most
near-absolute-zero worlds) were said to be such 4D beings. And Doc Smith
also used this idea at least twice where regular folks (for values of
regular folks including Kinnisons and Seatons) were trapped in alien
dimensions, and their 3D senses were inadequate for the task of
comprehending their surroundings.

--
So much universe, and so little time. - Sir Terry Pratchett

[Greg Weeks]

The Jade Darcy stories of Stephen Goldin have a 4-d being described like this. He's the being that provides instant travel in the stories.


Jade Darcy and the Affair of Honor (1988)
Jade Darcy and the Zen Pirates (1990)

Greg Weeks

[Jerry Friedman]

Thanks. Do you know whether they were mentioned in the one Doc Smith book
I've read, which is the one where Kim Kinnison lets a Bad Person (called
the Overlord?) mutilate him one slice at a time?

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

Thanks, but I'm sure I haven't read those. Do you recommend them?

--
Jerry Friedman

[Greg Weeks]

I remember liking them. It's been a long time since I've read them. I read them when they came out. I remember them being a bit campy and humorous.

Greg

[Mike M]

Almost certainly. One Palainian, Nadreck, was Kinnison's counterpart for
his race. I think he featured in most of the Lensman books.

[Stumpy]

On 06/07/2015 08:11 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> The "pink worms" of people's life histories in Heinlein's "Life-line"

Sounds a little like the short persistence bubble path phenomena that
Donnie Darko observed in the 2001 movie.

[Butch Malahide]

On Sunday, June 7, 2015 at 10:11:50 PM UTC-5, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> Hi, all. It seems to me I've read a story where some mysterious and possibly
> disgusting thing turns out to be the way a four-dimensional being appears to
> our three-dimensional perception, the way a sphere would look like a circle
> of changing size to a Flatlander. Maybe it was an old story in a Groff
> Conklin anthology or something like that. Ring any bells?

Well, it probably wasn't "The Despoilers" by Rog Phillips (Earth conquered by four-dimensional beings) which appeared in the October 1947 Amazing Stories and was never reprinted, although it more or less fits your description.

I believe you're thinking of "The Monster from Nowhere" by Nelson S. Bond, which is misattributed to Donald Wandrei in my copy of the Conklin anthology _The Best of Science Fiction_.

[BEGIN QUOTE]
The _thing_ was still suspended on its imprisoning rod. As before, it was wriggling and moving, changing its shape with such rapidity that the human eye could scarcely view one shape before that turned into another. In view of what Burch had told me, I could comprehend the _thing_ better now. I could understand how, if that black blob of flesh captured by the bar were _really_--as Burch presumed--a leg of some ultra-dimensional monster, the movements of that limb, as it sought to break free, would throw continuously changing projections into our world.

I could understand, too, why from time to time we would see _other_ bits of solid matter appear in various sections of the room. Though these seemed disassociated with that chunk hanging on the trap. I knew it was really separate portions of the same beast. Because if a _man_ were to thrust four fingers, simultaneously, into Flatland, to the Flatlander it would appear to be four separate objects; while in reality they were part of a single unit in a dimension beyond his powers of conception.

[Jerry Friedman]

Hm, that's possible, though the opening doesn't sound familiar. But
then it would have been some decades since I read it. Thank you.

Thanks also to Stumpy, though I haven't seen /Donnie Darko/.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Stumpy]

"Jerry Friedman" <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

...

Hm, that's possible, though the opening doesn't sound familiar. But
then it would have been some decades since I read it. Thank you.

Thanks also to Stumpy, though I haven't seen /Donnie Darko/.

---------------------------

Odd movie, tangent universes, music, seeing the future or schizophrenia it's
all interesting.

[Jack Bohn]

"Life-line"-like worms (yeah, easier to type than to say) play a part in _The Paradox Men_ (_Flight into Yesterday_), too.

Frank Belknap Long used a 4-D creature as a Lovecraftian horror in a story in _The Early Long_. Looking at the contents, if "The Space Eaters" wasn't the title, it should have been. The creature appeared to be a brain flapping about, and a disconnected arm of impossible length.

--
-Jack

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 6/10/15 10:42 PM, Jack Bohn wrote:
> "Life-line"-like worms (yeah, easier to type than to say) play a part in _The Paradox Men_ (_Flight into Yesterday_), too.
>
> Frank Belknap Long used a 4-D creature as a Lovecraftian horror in a story in _The Early Long_. Looking at the contents, if "The Space Eaters" wasn't the title, it should have been. The creature appeared to be a brain flapping about, and a disconnected arm of impossible length.
>

It was "The Space Eaters" and features a fictionalized HPL being
destroyed in a very Lovecraftian-ironic way.

--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Jack Bohn]

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:

> On 6/10/15 10:42 PM, Jack Bohn wrote:

> > "Life-line"-like worms (yeah, easier to type than to say) play a part in _The Paradox Men_ (_Flight into Yesterday_), too.
> >
> > Frank Belknap Long used a 4-D creature as a Lovecraftian horror in a story in _The Early Long_. Looking at the contents, if "The Space Eaters" wasn't the title, it should have been. The creature appeared to be a brain flapping about, and a disconnected arm of impossible length.
> >
>
>
> It was "The Space Eaters" and features a fictionalized HPL being
> destroyed in a very Lovecraftian-ironic way.

Ah, yes. He got the express written permission of HPL to do so, didn't he?

I see the press of time prevented me from saying _The Paradox Men_ was by Charles L Harness, but that would be easy to find out.

--
-Jack

[Butch Malahide]

On Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 10:55:01 AM UTC-5, Stumpy wrote:
> "Jerry Friedman" wrote in message

>
> ...
>
> Hm, that's possible, though the opening doesn't sound familiar. But
> then it would have been some decades since I read it.

The opening of what doesn't sound familiar? The opening of the story,
or the opening of the passage I quoted? Nelson Bond's "The Monster from
Nowhere" starts with a discussion in a bar:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
One nice thing about the Press Club is that you can get into almost
any kind of wrangle you want. This night we were talking about things
unusual. Jamieson of the _Dispatch_ mentioned some crackpot he had
heard of who thought he could walk through glass. "Snipe" Andrews of
the _Morning Call_ had a wild yarn about the black soul of Rhoderick
Dhu, who, Nova Scotians claim, still walks the moors near Antigonish.
The guy named Joe brought up the subject of Ambrose Bierce's invisible
beast.

You remember the story? About the diarist who was haunted, and
pursued, by a gigantic thing which couldn't be seen? And who was finally
devoured by it?

Well, we chewed the fat about that one for a while and Jamieson said
the whole thing was fantastic; that total invisibility was impossible. The
guy named Joe said Bierce was right; that several things _could_ cause
invisibility. A complete absence of light, for one thing, he said. Or curvature
of light waves. Or coloration in a wavelength which was beyond that of
the human eye's visual scope.

Snipe Andrews said, "Nuts!" Winky Peters, who was getting a little tight, hiccoughed something to the effect that "There are more things
under Heav/n and Earth than are dreamed of in your Philosophy--" and
then got in a hell of a fuss with the bartender who said his name _wasn't_
Horatio.

I said nothing, because I didn't know. Maybe that is the reason why
this stranger, a few minutes later, moved over beside me and opened a
conversation.
[END QUOTE]

How does the opening of your story go?

[Jerry Friedman]

On Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 8:42:36 PM UTC-6, Jack Bohn wrote:
> "Life-line"-like worms (yeah, easier to type than to say) play a part in _The Paradox Men_ (_Flight into Yesterday_), too.
>
> Frank Belknap Long used a 4-D creature as a Lovecraftian horror in a story in _The Early Long_. Looking at the contents, if "The Space Eaters" wasn't the title, it should have been. The creature appeared to be a brain flapping about, and a disconnected arm of impossible length.

That may well be it. I actually read /The Early Long/ (and didn't like
it much).

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 9:03:46 PM UTC-6, Butch Malahide wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 10:55:01 AM UTC-5, Stumpy wrote:
> > "Jerry Friedman" wrote in message
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Hm, that's possible, though the opening doesn't sound familiar. But
> > then it would have been some decades since I read it.
>
> The opening of what doesn't sound familiar? The opening of the story,
> or the opening of the passage I quoted?

The passage you quoted, which I conclusion-jumpingly thought was the
opening of "The Monster from Nowhere", even though it doesn't look like
an opening, now that you mention it.

Possibly like this:

"The cross is not a passive agent. It protects the pure of heart, and
it has often appeared in the air above our sabbats, confusing and
dispersing the powers of darkness.

"--John Dee's /Necronomicon/

"The horror came to Partridgeville in a blind fog."

That being "The Space-Eaters". Partial preview at

https://books.google.com/books?id=A3Apl629GDAC&pg=PT150

That doesn't sound familiar either. Maybe I didn't read the whole book,
or maybe I'm not going to recognize a story that I read once in my teens.

Anyway, thanks for the beginning of "The Monster from Nowhere". ("The
Space-Eaters" also mentiones colors we can't see, which I suppose Long got
from "The Colour out of Space".)

--
Jerry Friedman

[Butch Malahide]

Here's another suggestion: "The Captured Cross-Section" by Miles J. Breuer,
M.D., same guy who wrote "The Gostak and the Doshes". Reprinted (from a 1929
_Amazing_) in Clifton Fadiman's _Fantasia Mathematica_.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?54634

Here is the opening paragraph:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
The head of Jiles Heagey, Instructor in Mathematics, was bent low over
the sheets of figures; and becomingly close to it, leaned the curly-haired
one of his fiancee, Sheila Mathers, daughter of the Head of the
Mathematics Department. Sheila was no mean mathematician herself,
and had published some original papers.
[END QUOTE]

Here is the description of the 4D being:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
There in front of them was a rapidly moving object; it bounced
up and down off the floor to a height of three feet about once a
second. It did not have the harmonic motion of a bouncing body,
however; it stopped abruptly up in the air and shot downward at high
speed, hit the floor, stopped a moment and shot back upward. Then
it stopped suddenly and hung in the air. It was about the size of a
large watermelon, and looked for all the world like human skin:
smooth, uniform, unbroken all around.

The two stared at it amazed. Heagey walked up and touched it
with the tip of a finger. It grew smaller. And suddenly it decreased
to about one-half of its former size, retaining its surface smoothness
and uniformity unchanged.

It had felt soft and warm, like human flesh.

Now it was increasing in size again, while they stared gasping,
speechless, at it. When it stopped growing suddenly, it was the size
of a big barrel, with rounded ends. There was a bulging ridge around
the middle, on each side of which was a dark brown strap of something
like leather. The rest of it was just naked skin.

Sheila and Heagey stood rooted to the spot, staring at it. and at each
other. What was the thing? Where had it come from?

The Thing began thumping up and down off the floor again, with
great, thudding shocks. After a while it desisted and lay still. It was
a most uncouth, hideous-looking thing: a great lump of naked flesh
with two straps around it. It looked exactly like some huge tumor in
a medical museum, or like some monstrosity of birth. Could it be alive?

Both of them approached it cautiously. Heagey pricked it with a pin.
The skin was tough and he jabbed hard. A drop of blood appeared.

Then there was a terrible commotion. The object decreased in size
to a small sphere like a baseball. In fact, there were several
baseball-sized lumps of flesh all around; just naked flesh. They moved
rapidly, and two of them were between him and Sheila. Two or three were
on the far side of her. He counted ten of them altogether. Five of them
closed swiftly around her. Then she was gone!
[END QUOTE]

[Butch Malahide]

On Saturday, June 13, 2015 at 4:17:55 AM UTC-5, Butch Malahide wrote:
> Here's another suggestion: "The Captured Cross-Section" by Miles J. Breuer,
> M.D., same guy who wrote "The Gostak and the Doshes". Reprinted (from a 1929
> _Amazing_) in Clifton Fadiman's _Fantasia Mathematica_.

Here is Bleiler's description of "The Captured Cross-Section" from
_Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years_:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
Young mathematics instructor Jiles Heagey has
expanded Einstein's equations to the point where they encompass
the fourth dimension. He has also constructed an apparatus to
render it accessible. (The principle involved is geometrical
rotation.) On its first trial the machine brings into our world a
fourth-dimensional being, which consists of roughly spherical
segments that combine and disassociate themselves. All well and
good, but a couple of the segments corner Sheila Mathers, Jiles's
near fiancee, and drag her away into the fourth dimension,. At
this point Dr. Mathers, Sheila's father and the department head,
who disapproves of Heagey, accuses him of murder. It is now
up to Jiles to retrieve Sheila. An entry into the fourth dimension
does not help, for he cannot find her. Taking thought, he enlists
the aid of artists and sculptors in constructing a three-dimensional
message for the fourth-dimensional being still held in our space:
Release Sheila and we will release you. It works.

[Alie...@gmail.com]

On Friday, June 12, 2015 at 10:12:42 AM UTC-7, Jerry Friedman wrote:

(snip and shuffle)

> Well, we chewed the fat about that one for a while and Jamieson said
> the whole thing was fantastic; that total invisibility was impossible. The
> guy named Joe said Bierce was right; that several things _could_ cause
> invisibility. A complete absence of light, for one thing, he said. Or
> curvature of light waves.

(First infodump of stealth tech in SF?)

(Also, did Joe mean *Ambrose* Bierce?)

> Or coloration in a wavelength which was beyond that of the human eye's
> visual scope.

> ("The Space-Eaters" also mentiones colors we can't see, which I suppose
> Long got from "The Colour out of Space".)

There's an old pulp SF on my Kindle that I've mislaid about a solo asteroid miner who finds a derelict space yacht with an invisible monster (wildlife from maybe a moon of Neptune?) on board that can see humans well enough to kill them. It isn't described as if it were blundering around blindly. I'll post author and title when I find the Kindle.

ERB's Eighth and Ninth Barsoomian Rays (and Gridley waves) haven't been identified in our spectrum either.

(Niven's _Rainbow Mars_ retcons the Eighth Ray as UV lasers illuminating tanks of antigravity gas, but that seemed slightly cheap to me.)

Anyway, possible wavey stuff slightly (or way) outside the ken of contemporary Earth science's grubby reductionist spectroscopes was in the public mind at the times these were written, what with Ruth Drown, Tesla, and Violet Ray machines in every parlor.

Piers Anthony's _Macroscope_ saw by unknown wavicle-thingies too IIRC.

> Winky Peters, who was getting a little tight, hiccoughed something to the
> effect that "There are more things under Heav/n and Earth than are dreamed

> of in your [Natural] Philosophy--"


Mark L. Fergerson

[Butch Malahide]

On Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 5:04:44 AM UTC-5, nu...@bid.nes wrote:
> On Friday, June 12, 2015 at 10:12:42 AM UTC-7, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
> (snip and shuffle)
>
> > Well, we chewed the fat about that one for a while and Jamieson said
> > the whole thing was fantastic; that total invisibility was impossible. The
> > guy named Joe said Bierce was right; that several things _could_ cause
> > invisibility. A complete absence of light, for one thing, he said. Or
> > curvature of light waves.
>
> (First infodump of stealth tech in SF?)
>
> (Also, did Joe mean *Ambrose* Bierce?)

Who else? How many other Bierces wrote a yarn about an invisible beast?
I suppose Joe is referring to Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing".

> > Or coloration in a wavelength which was beyond that of the human eye's
> > visual scope.
>
> > ("The Space-Eaters" also mentiones colors we can't see, which I suppose
> > Long got from "The Colour out of Space".)

Or maybe everybody got the idea from Ambrose Bierce:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
"As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the
chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They
represent colors--integral colors in the composition of light--which we
are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its
range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad;
there are colors that we cannot see.

"And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"
[END QUOTE]

> There's an old pulp SF on my Kindle that I've mislaid about a solo asteroid miner who finds a derelict space yacht with an invisible monster (wildlife from maybe a moon of Neptune?) on board that can see humans well enough to kill them. It isn't described as if it were blundering around blindly. I'll post author and title when I find the Kindle.

That's Jack Williamson's "Salvage in Space". The invisible monster is from Uranus's moon Titania. There's a Project Gutenberg etext:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29283

[William December Starr]

In article <74b1f265-2fdb-4f47...@googlegroups.com>,

Butch Malahide <fred....@gmail.com> said:

> Or maybe everybody got the idea from Ambrose Bierce:
>
> [BEGIN QUOTE]
> "As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the
> chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They
> represent colors--integral colors in the composition of light--which we
> are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its
> range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad;

"I'll take 'Four-word phrases that generally don't enhance your
credibility' for six hundred, Alex."

> there are colors that we cannot see.
> "And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"
> [END QUOTE]

So, uh, it looks black to humans?

-- wds

[Alie...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 4:41:19 PM UTC-7, William December Starr wrote:
> In article <74b1f265-2fdb-4f47...@googlegroups.com>,
> Butch Malahide <fred....@gmail.com> said:
>
> > Or maybe everybody got the idea from Ambrose Bierce:
> >
> > [BEGIN QUOTE]
> > "As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the
> > chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They
> > represent colors--integral colors in the composition of light--which we
> > are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its
> > range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad;
>
> "I'll take 'Four-word phrases that generally don't enhance your
> credibility' for six hundred, Alex."

You almost made me snort coffee out of my nose!

> > there are colors that we cannot see.
> > "And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"
> > [END QUOTE]
>
> So, uh, it looks black to humans?

Light can do three things when it hits a material object; reflect off of it, pass through, or be absorbed. If it's absorbed it can be re-emitted or cause an emission process at a different wavelength, but that's beside the point.

If the critter reflected only in the IR/UV but was transparent to what we call "visible light" it would look like a patch of air to human eyes.

Hard to accept that its index of refraction only in the visible happens to be identical to that of air, though. If it's off by just a bit the thing will look like glass or maybe mist.


Mark L. Fergerson

[Alie...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 3:53:42 AM UTC-7, Butch Malahide wrote:
> On Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 5:04:44 AM UTC-5, nu...@bid.nes wrote:
> > On Friday, June 12, 2015 at 10:12:42 AM UTC-7, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> >
> > (snip and shuffle)
> >
> > > Well, we chewed the fat about that one for a while and Jamieson said
> > > the whole thing was fantastic; that total invisibility was impossible. The
> > > guy named Joe said Bierce was right; that several things _could_ cause
> > > invisibility. A complete absence of light, for one thing, he said. Or
> > > curvature of light waves.
> >
> > (First infodump of stealth tech in SF?)
> >
> > (Also, did Joe mean *Ambrose* Bierce?)
>
> Who else? How many other Bierces wrote a yarn about an invisible beast?
> I suppose Joe is referring to Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing".

I don't know it; another hole in my reading.

> > > Or coloration in a wavelength which was beyond that of the human eye's
> > > visual scope.
> >
> > > ("The Space-Eaters" also mentiones colors we can't see, which I suppose
> > > Long got from "The Colour out of Space".)
>
> Or maybe everybody got the idea from Ambrose Bierce:
>
> [BEGIN QUOTE]
> "As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the
> chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They
> represent colors--integral colors in the composition of light--which we
> are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its
> range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad;
> there are colors that we cannot see.
>
> "And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"
> [END QUOTE]

Well, well, well. The Wikipedia article on the story mentions similarities to Guy de Maupassant's 1887 _Le Horla_, also about a creature we can't see due to human sensory limitations.

How far back does this go? Surely not beyond the earliest attempts to describe the visible spectrum as part of a larger spectrum- say no earlier than Newton?

> > There's an old pulp SF on my Kindle that I've mislaid about a solo
> > asteroid miner who finds a derelict space yacht with an invisible monster

> That's Jack Williamson's "Salvage in Space". The invisible monster is from
> Uranus's moon Titania. There's a Project Gutenberg etext:
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29283

That's it, thank you (I still haven't tripped over the Kindle). I believe that's where I got the story.


Mark L. Fergerson

[William Vetter]

Somebody told me once that the violet line in the Balmer spectrum of
hydrogen isn't detected by the cones in the eyes, so you only see it
when you look away from it. Or something like that. I don't know if
this is so, but the guy was given a professorship, so.... The one time
I looked at it a H2 gas discharge tube with a spectroscope, it was a
kinda funny-lookin' line.

You know, "actinic light" is a rather obsolete term for any light that
drives a photochemical reaction. It could be the light that exposes
photographic film.

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-06-15, William Vetter <mdha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Somebody told me once that the violet line in the Balmer spectrum of
> hydrogen isn't detected by the cones in the eyes, so you only see it
> when you look away from it. Or something like that. I don't know if
> this is so, but the guy was given a professorship, so.... The one time
> I looked at it a H2 gas discharge tube with a spectroscope, it was a
> kinda funny-lookin' line.

It depends on the person; I can see it. It's more of a "it's right on the
edge, or just over it, for some people's color vision"; my lab partner at the
time I was making this observation could see deeper into the far red than I
could.

Dave, and remember that back near the beginning of last century X-rays, and
their marvellous looking-through-things-like-feet properties, were still
pretty new in the public eye (see [sic] what i did thar?)
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://gatekeeper.vic.com/~dbd/ -net.legends/Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[William December Starr]

In article <21189e5e-193c-46fc...@googlegroups.com>,
"nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> said:

> William December Starr wrote:
>
>>> there are colors that we cannot see.
>>> "And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"
>>> [END QUOTE]
>>
>> So, uh, it looks black to humans?
>
> Light can do three things when it hits a material object; reflect
> off of it, pass through, or be absorbed. If it's absorbed it can
> be re-emitted or cause an emission process at a different
> wavelength, but that's beside the point.
>
> If the critter reflected only in the IR/UV but was transparent to
> what we call "visible light" it would look like a patch of air to
> human eyes.

"If," though. I was basing my snark just on the quote from the
Bierce story and there wasn't any mention of visible-spectrum
transparency there.

-- wds

[Alie...@gmail.com]

I keep trying to remember the state of science known to authors such as Bierce, Lovecraft, and others relevant to early speculation on invisible monsters. Did Bierce possibly think that objects changed the color of light reflecting off of them, rather than light of different colors having to be selectively absorbed and reflected? Did Bierce ever study painting?

If Niven had done it he'd have had the critter's fur absorb all EM and fluoresce only in the violet Balmer line that most people can't see straight-on.


Mark L. Fergerson

[Robert Carnegie]

On Monday, 15 June 2015 01:50:58 UTC+1, nu...@bid.nes wrote:
> Well, well, well. The Wikipedia article on the story mentions similarities to Guy de Maupassant's 1887 _Le Horla_, also about a creature we can't see due to human sensory limitations.
>
> How far back does this go? Surely not beyond the earliest attempts to describe the visible spectrum as part of a larger spectrum- say no earlier than Newton?

Another Wikipedia article says, "The idea of a body
[that is, a star] so massive that even light could
not escape was first put forward by John Michell in
a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 of the
Royal Society."

H. G. Wells is later; his Invisible Man chemically
adjusted his refractive index to... zero? one?
I forget. Anyway, it was more a matter of science-
sounding words and amusing special effects in the movie.

I suppose that another "way to do it" is to emit a
ray that anaesthetises the retina, so that it "sees"
not the invisible thing, but what there was there
before the invisible thing moved in front of it.
This isn't problem-free but it can go some way.
After all, we aren't conscious of our vision defects,
including an actual blind spot in each eye. Our idea
of the world doesn't have a perceptible gap although
it does have a gap in perception.

You see something similar sometimes when digital
television goes a bit wrong. And I think I heard
about video software specifically for Macintosh (?)
that has a feature of photographing any background
and substituting it with digital scenery: your real
study-room is invisible and you can walk into a
completely virtual scene as far as your video is
concerned. But if you set this up when you're
already in the scene, then you are also wearing
the digital scenery on your virtual body. I don't
know if it means that you can walk around carrying
it, but it's going to look really weird any way.

[William December Starr]

In article <7b979a55-bc44-4efb...@googlegroups.com>,

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> said:

> H. G. Wells is later; his Invisible Man chemically
> adjusted his refractive index to... zero? one?
> I forget. Anyway, it was more a matter of science-
> sounding words and amusing special effects in the movie.

The refractive index of a vacuum is one -- the index of refraction _is_

(speed of light in vacuum) / (the phase velocity of light in the medium)

-- and air's is a hair greater than one: 1.000293 at zero Celsius and one
atmosphere of pressure, so either "one" or "the refractive index of air"
would have worked.

(There's also apparently some jiggery-trickery that allows for indexes of
refraction that are less than one, and even for negative indexes if you
stack the deck properly, but I haven't tried to understand that.)

-- wds

[Robert Carnegie]

Now that I've checked, it is the refractive index of air.
<http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=628>
...and presumably albinism. (Perhaps he had it anyway.)

I still think the explanation is carefully constructed
gibberish, and that Wells would have written zero
without blushing.

He argues that most cells of the human body are
transparent, and so it's a short step to make the
entire body transparaent. Well I'm sorites but
that's a heap of nonsense.

[William Vetter]

Here is the gibberish taken from your link:

"You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the
same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if it is
put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will
consider only a second, you will see also that the powder of glass
might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index could be made
the same as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or
reflection as the light passed from glass to air."

What this argument resembles is that, if you immerse a transparent
microcrystal into a series of fluids, under a microscope you will see
optical diffraction fringes around its edges, up until the fluid and
the crystal have nearly the same refractive index and the fringes will
disappear. If you have a set of vials with a continuous series of
refractive index fluids, you can put drops of them on a glass slide to
estimate the index of the crystal, or perhaps identify they material
from values in a table. This is pretty much an obsolete chemical
characterization technique...the last time I looked refractive indexes
are listed in CRC handbook for to do this with, but I haven't looked at
a new edition for a long time. It's an optical crystallography
technique -- maybe some geologists still do it with sand or something.

[Robert Carnegie]

So... there is more real science in this - "obsolete" but
presumably still works - than I thought there is. But I
take it that you can't make an invisibility drug... or,
you aren't going to talk about it until you have a patent.
For one thing, people going "Who said that?" will not
be amusing for very long. :-)

[William Vetter]

After electron microscope was developed, pretty soon there was electron
beam microprobe, where you look at the powder under the microscope,
then focus the beam on a crystal grain, and get an electron diffraction
pattern from it. Of course, we all want to use the most sophisticated
and expensive technique available.

[Greg Goss]

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

[Wells' doubletalk explanation of "The Invisible Man"]

>So... there is more real science in this - "obsolete" but
>presumably still works - than I thought there is. But I
>take it that you can't make an invisibility drug... or,
>you aren't going to talk about it until you have a patent.
>For one thing, people going "Who said that?" will not
>be amusing for very long. :-)

The guy in the novel didn't find it all that amusing for long either.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.