Transcription
Okay, this is going to be one of those videos that I'm going to start with a picture. And the picture is right here. This is a picture of a mouse lying down, except that in the right picture, this mouse is no longer alive. In other words, this picture shows us a mouse that passed away and now appears to be kind of different. But what exactly are we seeing here? Well, this is really what this video is about. This bizarre phenomenon is known as UPE, ultra-weak photon emissions; a previously hypothetical phenomenon that was actually believed to exist based on what we know about biochemistry inside a typical body. But up until relatively recently, it was completely unproven and it was impossible to see it. Yet here in this recent study, researchers definitively showed us that UP seems to be real, and living bodies and actually anything living seems to produce a kind of a biological light, or I guess biophotons, representing an extremely weak type of luminescence that's different from any kind of other bioluminescence produced by certain bacteria.
And so in this video, we're going to discuss the study you can find in the description by Salari and the team you see right here with the title, "Imaging UP from living and dead mice and from plants under stress." In essence, definitively showing us that UP seems to be a real phenomenon, or showing us that most life on Earth seems to emit a certain type of light that basically disappears when that something dies. But here, let's start with something super important, just because all of this can be easily misinterpreted pretty quickly here. We're not talking about anything paranormal or some kind of an aura claimed to exist by various psychics, because that is not at all what we're discussing or what's being investigated. These are actual biological and electromagnetic emissions coming from within various cells and produced by very specific chemical reactions.
And as a matter of fact, this glow is much, much, much weaker than what we typically detect with an infrared camera. In this case, this is also a biological electromagnetic emission, but it's based entirely on our heat, or basically the emissions in the infrared produced by humans and pretty much all other warm-blooded animals. For example, here's a picture of some kind of an animal. Uh, take a guess what this is. And so instead, here we're talking about something that seems to be emitted in optical light. So basically something that's technically visible to our eyes, but something that's super, super, super weak, or basically light that's so dim that it would be impossible to see without some kind of a specialized camera. But first, I guess let's discuss the main theory behind this and how all of this works and then discuss what was discovered.
Now, first of all, this is obviously not the first study about this and not the first attempt to try to see this. There are quite a lot of different studies out there that try to create similar effects by doing something slightly different. For example, in this study, researchers try to create a very similar response by causing stress on the skin through the illumination with ultraviolet radiation, or basically here by exposing skin to the UV light. Researchers hypothesized that we're going to be seeing more ultra-weak photon emissions, but the science behind this has been explored for many, many decades. This was previously referred to as biophotons, and technically it was kind of controversial before, but the idea was pretty sound, and here the assumption was that typical biological processes should be able to create some kind of light, or essentially a form of chemoluminescence, kind of similar to what we see from, for example, fireflies, but obviously much, much dimmer.
Or just to rephrase this, the same chemical response that makes fireflies glow technically happens in many different cells, but just to a much smaller extent. Although, just to correct myself right away, in case of fireflies, they actually do produce something referred to as luciferase. You can learn about this in one of the previous videos in the description. But the overall principle is not so different in a sense that it basically relies on oxygen and certain proteins, which results in an oxidation reaction that then produces light. And so a typical firefly controls the brightness of the light by controlling the amount of oxygen. And so even as far back as the 1980s, several scientific teams claimed to have detected various types of light coming from various types of tissues. And here we're talking about light detectable with our eyes, with initial explanations basically suggesting that this was a reactive oxygen species that seems to cause protein oxidation that then triggers electron oxidation and the creation of light. But in most cases, a lot of this light was very dim. And so technically, it could have been coming from something else entirely.
And so for many years, this sort of remained more or less unproven. But the explanation behind this and, of course, why this was important encouraged a lot of teams to pursue this further and to try to prove this once and for all. And here the reasons were obvious. A lot of these oxidizing agents were normally the result of stress. In other words, when the body is stressed, or technically when the cell is stressed, such as for example when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, various reactive oxygen species are normally produced inside the cell and started to interact with a lot of different proteins. And so technically any stressor, like for example even a poison, can produce these oxygen species, which then causes the transformation inside the cells, causing certain proteins to kick off certain electrons, which basically releases light. And in theory, this would basically allow us to physically see stressed organisms, which would be super important in any medical field. You could use this to physically see what body part or what cell is potentially causing the distress. Here, the stressed body part or the stressed organ would physically light up and become easily visible.
And so this remote monitoring of stress has a lot of potential applications in medicine, animal husbandry, or even agriculture, because this also applies to plants. But up until recently, once again, this was kind of hypothetical. And so here we have this new research coming out of Canada. A team from the University of Calgary decided to test this once again by using what's known as EMCCD, an image sensor capable of detecting and quantifying a single photon event, making it possible to observe any light, no matter how dim it is. So basically here we're talking about a super-sensitive camera, with the experiment itself involving mice, living and then dead. Now, not all of you might find this ethical, but this is basically done in most labs, especially medical labs. So, this is just something that's generally accepted in the scientific field. But in a nutshell, they took four mice, they injected them with anesthesia, and placed them on a heating mat. This was done in order to prevent their bodies from cooling down and in order to maintain a relatively constant temperature. The mice were then euthanized, with the researchers observing how the light from mice changed over time. And it becomes pretty obvious that the light coming from these mice, actual optical light, not infrared light, dropped dramatically within approximately 1 hour. In this case, definitively showing researchers that individual cells inside mice were producing visible light until the cells became dead and proving that there was a significant drop in these UPEs following the demise of the mice.
But in order to see if this is actually something that happens to living beings or if this was some kind of an experimental fluke, they did this again with plants as well. And so here by using leaves from several different trees and by causing stress inside these leaves, in this case by applying certain chemical agents, they definitively showed that it was really the reactive oxygen species that were causing all of this light. And so basically here by increasing stress in certain regions, they increased the amount of light. This is something that was visible for many hours afterward. But after approximately 16 hours, the leaves returned to normal, indicating that they were no longer stressed and the oxygen species were no longer being produced. And interestingly, it was the application of what's known as benzocaine, or a local anesthetic, which seemed to produce the highest amount of emissions. And which also confirms that this is definitely something we can use in diagnostic techniques and something that can be used to observe if a plant or an animal are healthy. But obviously this was very, very low intensity. Here we're talking about just thousands of photons per centimeter squared per second, or something that will be practically invisible to the human eye.
Nevertheless, this extraordinary experiment almost definitively confirms that these biophotons or UPEs seem to indeed exist, and basically all living beings and everything alive seems to produce just a little bit of light, but we just cannot see it. Although here I think it would be interesting to find out if there really is an animal out there that can actually see this somehow. I mean, for all we know, maybe cats can actually see the mice that way. Although here this is just pure speculation. But here some of the biologists that read the study also suggest trying something else just to see if this is really what's happening. For example, in one of the future experiments, it might be possible to see if blood flow, in this case, can still encourage the production of the light, because here the blood itself is still going to be carried around the body and will still deliver oxygen to various body parts. And so if this is indeed biophotons produced through oxygenation by controlling for blood flow, it might be possible to prove this even further, because alternatively this could be produced by maybe something else. Maybe, for example, mitochondria, which do produce huge amounts of energy and are thus expected to produce something as well, or maybe by some other chemical reaction that was not previously considered.
And so when it comes to explaining exactly what's happening or exactly how this phenomenon works, there are still quite a lot of questions. None of this is still completely understood. For all in all, maybe this is a result of some kind of a signaling molecule or some other response to stress that was not considered before, or maybe some other reaction due to metabolism that suddenly stops when something dies. Either way, just to highlight again, this time it's really only possible because of these super extremely accurate cameras that would be very difficult to detect otherwise. And that's because any living being emits a lot of other stuff as well. As a matter of fact, the human body extremely likely produces a lot of other emissions; obviously emissions in the infrared, but also possibly radio emissions and maybe even emissions from various nuclear reactions going on in certain atoms inside our cells. And we'll actually come back and talk more about all of this in some of the future videos that are coming really soon. And so make sure to subscribe if you want to find out what.
And so until then, or until future discoveries, that's pretty much all I wanted to mention. A really intriguing discovery and a really important confirmation that biophotons or ultra-weak photon emissions seem to be real, and a really important confirmation that living things seem to actually glow just a little bit. Thank you for watching. Subscribe. Come back tomorrow to learn something else. Support the show on Patreon by joining channel membership or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in the description. Stay wonderful. I'll see you tomorrow and as always, bye-bye.