iStockphoto
Audio By Carbonatix
A new study is the first to reveal how all living things, including humans, glow and that light goes out upon death. The glow is caused by a stream of low-energy “biophotons” that are invisible to the naked eye and they cease to be produced upon death.
The illuminating discovery has not come without some controversy, however. According to Alex Wilkins of New Scientist, “these ‘biophotons’ are extremely difficult to detect and disentangle from other biological processes or light sources, such as the radiation produced by any warm object.”
The researchers involved in this new study, published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, were able to isolate these biophotons using digital cameras that could detect single photons and produce two, hour-long exposure images of four hairless mice, one before and one after death. In doing so, they were able to see that biophoton emissions decreased significantly across the animals’ entire bodies after death.
This is the first time this has been seen to occur in a whole animal. Previous studies were only able to display this result for individual cells and smaller body parts.
“The fact that ultraweak photon emission is a real thing is undeniable at this point,” study author Dan Oblak at the University of Calgary in Canada told New Scientist. “This really shows that this is not just an imperfection or caused by other biological processes. It’s really something that comes from all living things”
According to Michal Cifra at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, oxygen-rich blood is one of the key drivers of metabolism, which produces biophotons. So when blood flow ceases in the body, there are no biophotons being created to emit the glow.
The scientists also conducted this study on umbrella tree (Heptapleurum arboricola) leaves and found that the glow increased as its injury repair mechanism caused an increase in biophoton emission. This discovery is useful in that it could potentially become a new way of monitoring the health of forests. It also could one day be used to monitor living tissue without performing invasive tests, Wilkins reports.
“The nice thing about ultraweak photon emission is it’s a complete passive monitoring process,” said Oblak.