What If We Could See All Wavelengths Of Light?

If we could see all wavelengths of light, it would be overwhelming and confusing. We would not be able to see colors, and everything would appear in different tones of heat. We would be able to see through other objects, but people would appear less like their usual selves and more frightening instead.

Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation that consists of components with different wavelengths. You might already know that visible light, i.e. the light that we actually see and perceive, is just a small portion of all the light there is. So, what if we could see all the other components of the spectrum as well?

Let’s start with the left extreme of the spectrum…

Radio Waves

From your smartphone and television to computer networks and artificial satellites orbiting the planet, everything relies on radio waves to operate. Apart from these modern conveniences, almost everything in the universe emits radio waves, so being able to see these waves does more harm than good to your eyes, and it’s even worse for your brain! The latter would be bombarded with so much information in countless colors at all times that you would not be able to register/isolate anything at all, making you feel blinded by the influx of so much light and color.

Microwaves

The background lighting that fills the universe is actually the afterglow from the Big Bang. With microwave vision, we would see light shooting at us from everywhere in the sky (however, a small amount of that would be blocked by our atmosphere).

Other things in daily life that possess microwaves (like microwave ovens, GPS, traffic surveillance systems etc.) would also appear very brightly lit.

Infrared

With infrared vision, colors would essentially disappear, and you would only see things through different tones of heat. The hotter the object, the brighter it would appear. Human beings emit heat too (heat signature), so you would see every other person lit up according to how hot he/she is (no pun intended).

To add to that, you would be able to see people through thin objects like clothes, but solid walls would still block your view; people would appear less like their usual selves and more frightening instead, depending on their heat signature. In May 2025, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China unveiled upconversion contact lenses that convert near-infrared light into visible light, briefly giving human volunteers a real (if limited) taste of infrared vision — no power source required.

Ultraviolet

Normally, humans cannot perceive ultraviolet because our three types of cone photoreceptors (S, M and L, sensitive to short, medium and long wavelengths) only detect roughly blue, green and red light, and the eye’s lens absorbs most UV before it can reach the retina. However, animals like reindeer, sockeye salmon, butterflies and many birds have UV-sensitive photoreceptors. Reindeer use UV vision to spot lichens and predators against snow, while kestrels and other birds of prey can track the UV-reflecting urine trails left by voles and other small rodents.

That being said, humans can perceive UV light, but it comes at the cost of their eye lenses. People who have aphakia (the absence of an eye lens due to injury, surgery, ulcer etc.) have reported being able to see UV wavelengths. Claude Monet, an eminent painter and a “father” of French Impressionist painting, was able to see “impossible” colors due to the removal of lens following a cataract surgery.

Electronic gadgets that emit UV light (e.g., computer screens, tanning beds and UV lamps) would appear brighter, and seeing things with the UV filter would give our current perception of colors an overhaul.

What Would Ultraviolet Vision Actually Look Like?

So if we cleared the lens out of the way, what color would ultraviolet actually be? This is the question most people are really asking, and the honest answer is that there is no brand-new color waiting on the other side of violet. Our retinas only carry three kinds of cone, so any wavelength we manage to detect has to be reported in the language of those existing cones. Aphakic observers (people whose UV-blocking lens has been removed) describe near-ultraviolet not as some alien hue but as a whitish-blue or whitish-violet glow, the exact shade depending on the wavelength.

Why that particular tint? When UV reaches the retina with enough energy, all three cone types respond to some degree, and roughly balanced cone signals read as white. The short-wavelength (S, or "blue") cones, however, are noticeably more sensitive to ultraviolet than the green or red cones, so they tip the balance toward blue or violet. The result is a desaturated, washed-out blue rather than a vivid new shade. Laboratory work on dark-adapted aphakic observers backs this up: with the lens gone, the eye stays sensitive well into the near ultraviolet, down to around 315 nanometers, whereas a normal lens slashes sensitivity at 350 nm by roughly four orders of magnitude.

The biggest practical change would be the world's hidden patterns snapping into view. Many flowers paint UV "bull's-eye" nectar guides on their petals (clearly visible in the aster above) that steer pollinators toward the center, and these would suddenly stand out. Bright sunlight, sun-bleached pavement and the screens and lamps that already leak UV would look harsher. Ordinary window glass would behave oddly too: it lets most longer-wavelength UVA through but soaks up the shorter UVB, so a sunny window would glow with some ultraviolet while still screening out part of the spectrum. It would be a striking effect, but it would be more of a pale-blue overlay on the world we know than a window onto colors no human has ever named.

X-Rays

Thanks to movies and pop culture’s love for X-ray vision, we have been led to believe that X-ray vision will let us see through other people’s clothes – as well as buildings and underground bunkers. The truth is, even if you could see through someone’s clothes using your X-ray vision (which, by the way, you can), it’s only their bones that you would be able to see. X-rays have a very small wavelength and high amounts of energy, which is why they can penetrate a lot of stuff to give that ‘see-through’ vision effect.

Having X-ray vision would be far less cool than pop culture has led you to believe: you’d see a slightly different-colored sky (the atmosphere has small amounts of X-rays) and you would need an iron eye mask to catch any shut-eye. X-rays can pass through thick layers of fat and muscle, so what opposition could thin eyelids possibly offer!

Gamma Rays

Sitting at the top of the electromagnetic spectrum (in terms of frequency) are gamma rays, which consist of extremely high-energy photons that can penetrate almost everything around us. Since there aren’t many sources of gamma rays around us, there wouldn’t be much difference in your vision. However, you could see radioactive materials (that emit gamma rays), but you should probably keep your distance from them. You wouldn’t want to see too many gamma rays, or else you might end up like Dr. Bruce Banner.

Can You Actually See X-Rays Or Gamma Rays?

Everything above this point is a thought experiment, because our cones simply do not respond to X-rays or gamma rays the way they respond to visible light. And yet there is a real-world twist: people genuinely do report seeing flashes when high-energy radiation passes through their eyes, just not in the way comic books imagine. Apollo astronauts traveling beyond Earth's protective magnetosphere kept noticing pinpoints, streaks and faint clouds of light, even with their eyes shut, on the way to the Moon. These cosmic-ray "light flashes," sometimes nicknamed the astronaut's eye, have since been logged on Skylab, Mir and the International Space Station.

These flashes are phosphenes, sensations of light triggered by something other than ordinary light entering the eye. One leading explanation is Cherenkov radiation: when a charged particle tears through the eye's vitreous fluid faster than light travels in that medium, it leaves behind a faint optical shock wave, the same eerie blue glow you see around a submerged reactor core. In 2019, researchers imaging cancer patients during radiotherapy directly captured Cherenkov light being generated inside the human eye, at levels well above the threshold the retina can detect, finally giving the decades-old astronaut reports a measured physical basis.

So the honest answer is that you cannot "see" X-rays or gamma rays as colors or shapes. What you can occasionally perceive is the side effect of that radiation slamming into your eye and triggering your existing visual machinery, which is also why your eye can register a single visible photon under the right conditions but stays blind to the high-energy rays themselves. It is a flash of light, not a superpower, and it usually signals a dose of radiation you would much rather not be receiving.

To conclude, it’s fair to say that having any other type of vision besides the one we have now would make things more problematic or uncomfortable for us. However, if there was an option to toggle these special visions on and off, I think it would be pretty darn cool.