A Thought for the New Year
January 5th, 2008 | No Comments »
I have been away thinking about other things. But here is a thought about vision that might benefit from an update:
1.) I have described previously what the fundamental light detection centers (or “devices”) of the retina must consist of. My diagram below shows how light as a wave interacts in the inter-receptor space between two adjacent ( i.e., traditional rod or cone) receptors. To be more precise, the distance I refer to is between adjacent quantum confined electron centers. This space may include the inter-receptor fluid medium and the lipid structure of the receptor thylakoid membrane that leads to the retinal/rhodopsin electron confinement center. In overview the situation can be viewed in pure geometrical terms – but I will leave that for now. Each“device” then possesses the ability to detect light intensity and direction (see diagram). These are the requirements of “Fourier plane detector” as this explanation of the vision process requires.
Following the accepted result that the retina is able to detect single quanta (photons), I have proposed how this is accomplished by this structure. First, it must be understood that the lateral dimension (i.e., in the plane of the retina) of each device is of sub-optical wavelength (less than 0.5 micron). This corresponds to a light detection center density of many millions of these centers per square centimeter! It becomes clear the electronic characteristics of a device of this size (capacitance etc.) in conjunction with the realization that unwanted electronic “noise” is a time related function (see Huth) leads to the conclusion that the single quantum detection event is taking place in very fast time scale (probably femtosecond or 10-15 sec) and explains how this biological system accomplishes this feat at body temperature! All of this is more fully discussed in the body of the text.
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