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Shrishti Basu

Can we Glow?!

Yes, you read it right! Human bodies are actually bioluminescent but before we can dive deeper we need to know what exactly is bioluminescence? Bioluminescence is the emission of light from living organisms (such as fireflies, dinoflagellates, and bacteria) as the result of internal, typically oxidative chemical reactions. This phenomenon can be often linked with beautiful scenes from movies or that overused dreamy scene that is there in literally every Disney movie but that is not the case. On planet Earth a lot of creatures (including us) are actually bioluminescent but the human eye cannot detect the luminescence. That is precisely what happens in the case of the bioluminescence in the human body.


According to a research conducted in 2009 by Japanese researchers, the human body ‘literally glimmers’ ; it's just too dim for our frail human eye to detect. The intensity of the light emitted from the human body is 1,000 times lower than what is visible to the naked human eye. The team made an unusual discovery using super sensitive cameras to monitor 5 healthy male volunteers every 3 hours for 20 minutes in a light tight room.

They found that the volunteers glowed all round the day with the forehead, neck, and cheeks appearing the brightest late afternoon and dimmest late at night. This wasn’t infrared radiation caused by the heat but rather photons of visible light.


This is caused as a side effect of metabolism. It is the result of highly reactive free radicals produced through cell respiration interacting with free-floating lipids and proteins. These excited molecules then react with fluorophores (A fluorophore is a fluorescent chemical compound that can re-emit light upon light excitation.) which can emit a photon and kaboom! You’re now scientifically glowing. It is said that the participants’ heads glowed the most because this part of the body generally sees more sunlight, affecting the melanin inside the skin and triggering the illuminating reaction better than other areas.

So now I hope you know that you don’t need anything to bring out the ‘glow’ you’re already glowing but you just can’t see it!


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