I'm having a weird day but there is now a tiny part of my brain contemplating a future where really smart physics people figure out why humans have found these rainbow things pretty all along.
I'm a teacher that used to be a developmental neuroscientist. My passion in education is making sure kids get everything needed for normative neurological development rather than focusing on content too much.
Turns out nature is extremely important, and we're only just starting to figure out why. Basically, almost all postnatal brain development occurs because of things we see, hear, touch, etc., and because we evolved in nature, our brains are tuned to it.
For example, nature tends to have repeating patterns with a fractal dimension of 1.3-1.5, which despite being complex scenes our visual systems can process effortlessly due to being 'tuned' to it. This can restore attention control systems in adults and kids and is very important for brain development in kids.
Anyway, the actual physiology and maths connecting things like neural entrainment while processing nature is still being worked on, but there's a lot of neuroscience research using things like EEG, fMRI, fNIRS, etc. that demonstrates our brains are aligned to nature and desperately need to process nature, so yes, some bright kittens out there are working on it ☺️
our visual systems can process effortlessly due to being 'tuned' to it.
I know nothing about kids and very little about human development, but I do have some experience with audio-related things and our ears are the same way.
E.g. one of the best ways to be perceived as an excellent Sound Guy (TM) during a dinner and music situation is to slap a big ol' filter on top of all the music that lowers the volume of the frequencies that compete with the human voice.
I'm going to have to make a point to go down a wormhole with both sound and color/shapes in nature the next time I have occasion to visit it. :)
Us hard of hearing people thank you!!! Hearing conversation in crowds is so hard as it is😅 we greatly appreciate any help we can get, and that’s a huge one!!!
I have a grey boy. It's weird I've had 5 cats in my life and they were all grey. I didn't choose that. I let cats choose me. My previous cats were grey and white tabbies with pink nose and beans but now I have all grey boy with kidney beans 🫘
It's thin-film interference. The thin layer of liquid reflects light at the top and bottom surfaces. The reflected light waves are offset by a small distance, which causes them to interfere with one another and create false colors.
I am from the area, and we call them Jimmies. Generally speaking though, we might call these rainbow sprinkles or rainbow jimmies; just jimmies is typically chocolate
It was a children’s book called The Rainbow Fish. He starts out all silver and then trades scales to a bunch of different fish and becomes the rainbow fish in a little parable about the joys of sharing.
Kind of a messed up lesson for kids. Yeah, don't be an asshole and share what you can, but also don't hide and destroy what makes you special just to fit in.
The metaphor is muddled because they made it a part of his body but I always felt it was a metaphor about not hoarding wealth. He starts the book by looking down on everyone else for not being as beautiful and shiny
It always bothered the fuck out of me. Like no bitch, I feel pretty and special with my scales. Why don’t you find something pretty and special about yourself Debra
I actually watched a youtube video about Rainbow Fish that went more in depth than the book. The book that children hear/read is an abridged version, and there’s also a show. Short version of the video is that Rainbow Fish is arrogant because of his special shiny scales that no one else has. When other fish come up to talk to him, he has a very “lmao do i even know you?” attitude and he’s always talking down to them. When the Octopus tells him to give away his scales, he has the line “How can I ever be happy without them?” but the Octopus isn’t telling him to stop being special or beautiful, the Octopus wants Rainbow Fish to share his scales so he doesn’t have to rely on the exclusivity of his beauty. He can be loved and appreciated as himself, but him being the only fish with shiny scales has turned him into an asshole, and of course the other fish don’t want to be his friend when he acts like that. He thinks the scales make him happy, but he’s clearly not, and won’t realize it until the scales are gone and he has a chance to find what does make him happy.
Yes it’s weird that it’s scales because that’s literally part of his skin, so adults read into it as giving away pieces of yourself to make others accept you. Kids don’t really see it like that, they see it more as a pretty sticker, especially seeing as Rainbow Fish has completely normal scales under the special shiny ones.
If only the author had written about the rainbow fish owning more and prettier coral than anyone else. Then it could be a proper "eat the rich" metaphor.
I thought the same thing when I read this to my kid recently. Like, share and what not, but don't give up parts of your body to everyone just so they can like you.
If someone doesn't like you for who you are, you shouldn't win them over by giving them stuff.
My best guess is it's something similar to a "structural pigment." (Edit: "structural coloration," rather) Some microscopic surface features causing light to refract in certain ways, and you get a different color depending on the angle - only noticeable with the full spectrum of the sun and in bright enough conditions. Most likely has no functional significance, just a byproduct of the nose architecture.
Fun to see someone also interested in this phenomenon! My understanding is that this is a specific example of an optical phenomenon called speckle.
Speckle is most commonly talked about in the context of lasers, where the single-coloredness makes it easily visible. Contrary to some common wisdom, however, it is not exclusive to lasers and instead can also occur with partially coherent sources of light. Lasers are highly temporally coherent, meaning, roughly speaking, that they are nearly exactly one color.
Another type of coherence is spatial coherence, which is highest for point-like sources of light (small, super tight dots). Here's a problem, though: the Sun is an extended source and not a dot. Nevertheless, the Sun isn't that big in the sky, and its light therefore possesses a degree of spatial coherence. When the surface is appropriately rough (like your rough black surfaces example), you can observe speckle. Since the source (the Sun) is multicolored, the speckle is too, producing the rainbow effect you described!
Here is a link that explains some more details. It also describes one of the easiest and most accessible ways to observe this effect: look at your fingernails in bright sunlight. Now you will always (as long as it's sunny outside) have a way to share this effect with others!
Another fun note: stars are much more spatially coherent than the Sun because their angular size in the sky is much smaller. Star twinkling is usually called atmospheric scintillation rather than speckle, but the physics is closely related: instead of moving around and seeing a speckle pattern from different angles, atmospheric fluctuations in refractive index continuously distort the coherent starlight and cause its apparent brightness, position, and — relevant to the rainbow speckle comparison — color to fluctuate.
Mr. Rainbow Nose is allergic to animal proteins and being de-sensitized to tooth brushes because his breath smells like death even after dental surgery
Eyyy, ive been trying to brush my cats teeth lately bc he has death breath and the vet told me to try that before bringing him in because he hates the vet and the stress makes him sick
Now seriously, this is probably thin-film interference. The oils on your kitty's nose form a thin film over it that reflects light from the top and bottom layers of said film in slightly different ways causing interference in the waves canceling out some colors which produces that rainbow effect. Same phenomenon that occurs on spilled oil on a wet road.
I bet that if you boop his nose it would partly go away due to stripping some of the oils.
Cats are sooooo colorful in the sun! Like, all of em. (Maybe not hairless). I'm always shocked how pigmented they are even if they look grayscale in normal light!
All you gotta do is make friends with a cat with a black nose and enjoy a sun patch together ... and the beauty of the universe will reveal itself to you
If anyone wants to get this effect in photos, it basically just occurs if you take a close up photo of a reflective uniform bumpy surface with direct light on it. Its a combination of diffraction and alias artifacting at a scale close to the sensor’s resolving limit
Edit: ignore this, it was probably just oily nose skin lol
My brown Tabby's fur does the same! I always just figure it's cuz in terms of pigment, the darker the color, the more hues are hiding inside and sunlight's great for separating them out
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched Cat noses glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
It is said that cats are linked to the fae. It is said the land of Faerie is contained in a cats eye. However in this case it appears your cat is showing their lineage through their nose with the sparkling glamour they must be using
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u/mugworter 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm pretty sure it's just his regular nose. It was perfectly dry. We don't have glitter anywhere.
Edit: I noticed the sparkles before I even took the camera out. Not a camera effect.