In 2007 I saw what appeared to be apparition, and wrote about it on my blog a few years later. One of the things that I recalled about the experience was the interesting effect when moving my eyes away from the apparition...
My ideas have developed a lot since I wrote this article. However at the time it lead me on a journey to try and understand our perception of colour, and Edwin Land's brilliant work which shows that colour is not a property of the world, but arises from us. It also led me to new ideas on the phase properties of light... there appeared to be something about phase which might be involved in the strange effect I observed when I moved my eyes away from the apparition. One of the areas of possible interest were the very strange properties of Phase Conjugate Mirror's...
When the light strikes a normal mirror at an angle, it reflects back in the opposite direction, such that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. However, with a phase conjugate mirror, light is always reflected straight back the way it came from, no matter what the angle of incidence.
This difference in the manner of reflection has significant consequences. For example if we place an irregular distorting glass in the path of a beam of light, the parallel rays get bent in random directions, and after reflection from a normal mirror, each ray of light is bent even farther, and the beam is scattered.
With a phase conjugate mirror, on the other hand, each ray is reflected back in the direction it came from. This reflected conjugate wave therefore propagates backwards through the distorting medium, in a bizarre time-reversed reconstruction, and essentially "un-does" the distortion, and returns to a coherent beam of parallel rays traveling in the opposite direction.
At the time, it was hard for me to to understand the strange behaviour of these mirrors without seeing them in action. Today I stumbled across a great video... demonstrating these amazing properties...
Quote:On the evening of Tuesday 11th September 2007, I awoke in the dark in the middle of the night to see a full colour, moving image of an unknown 45-55 y/o black male from the shoulders up. The image was in absolutely exquisite detail and incredible brilliant colour, as if the sun was shining on him (rather like an actor picked out by a spotlight on a darkened stage). The image lasted for more than a few seconds, and long enough for me to carry out a quick experiment, despite it’s disturbing nature (The moving imagery started with the back of the males head towards me, then slowly turned its head round towards me, and then stared at me).
Moving my eyes left, away from the spot where the full colour ‘moving’ image had formed, I clearly retained a faded after-image on my retina, which was the same shape as the original image I had seen (similar to the after-image you see when you look away from a bright TV screen in a darkened room). What is strange, is that I could also see a similar ‘fixed’ faded image in my peripheral vision, this was in the position of the original full colour image, and did not move about, when I moved my eyes left.
When I moved my focus back to the ‘fixed’ faded image, effectively overlapping both faded images, the original image jumped back into full colour. I was able to move my eyes left and right several times, to verify this effect, before the image finally faded away.
My ideas have developed a lot since I wrote this article. However at the time it lead me on a journey to try and understand our perception of colour, and Edwin Land's brilliant work which shows that colour is not a property of the world, but arises from us. It also led me to new ideas on the phase properties of light... there appeared to be something about phase which might be involved in the strange effect I observed when I moved my eyes away from the apparition. One of the areas of possible interest were the very strange properties of Phase Conjugate Mirror's...
When the light strikes a normal mirror at an angle, it reflects back in the opposite direction, such that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. However, with a phase conjugate mirror, light is always reflected straight back the way it came from, no matter what the angle of incidence.
This difference in the manner of reflection has significant consequences. For example if we place an irregular distorting glass in the path of a beam of light, the parallel rays get bent in random directions, and after reflection from a normal mirror, each ray of light is bent even farther, and the beam is scattered.
With a phase conjugate mirror, on the other hand, each ray is reflected back in the direction it came from. This reflected conjugate wave therefore propagates backwards through the distorting medium, in a bizarre time-reversed reconstruction, and essentially "un-does" the distortion, and returns to a coherent beam of parallel rays traveling in the opposite direction.
At the time, it was hard for me to to understand the strange behaviour of these mirrors without seeing them in action. Today I stumbled across a great video... demonstrating these amazing properties...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(This post was last modified: 2023-01-09, 12:29 AM by Max_B. Edited 1 time in total.)
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.