Life's Last Glow: The Mysterious Light That Vanishes After Organisms Die

And it glows the brightest in our brains

Hiya!

Light is a key feature of our shared, objective world, and exists in more forms than there are ways to prepare a potato. However, as visually sensitive as we are, our human eyes can only detect a limited range of light. Thankfully, technological advancements allow scientists to detect and measure several other forms of light that are invisible to the naked human eye, such as ultraviolet, infrared, and radiation waves.

Over the last century, yet another unique form of light has been identified, called Ultraweak Photon Emission (UPE). And recently, two groundbreaking studies have discovered evidence that all living organisms emit UPE, that our brain emits the brightest light, and that this light disappears upon death. Experts have some ideas about what creates UPE, but no one knows for sure.

Ultraweak Photon Emissions (UPEs)

Beyond the Sun or other cosmic sources, life itself can also emit light.

You’re likely already familiar with the high-intensity, sometimes eerie, illumination of bioluminescence, which emerges as a chemical reaction within a living organism. Many life forms, including bacteria, fireflies, and countless creatures inhabiting the deep, dark oceans emit bioluminescence. Some might even say that bioluminescence is the most common language on Earth.

Meanwhile, everything in the known universe that’s warmer than absolute zero degrees, including you and me, emits thermal radiation, a type of infrared radiation, or more commonly known as infrared light, which is invisible to us.

However, the light known as ultraweak photon emissions (UPEs) is a distinct phenomenon from thermal radiation or bioluminescence. As its name suggests, UPEs are a super low-intensity light that is so faint, it exists 3 to 6 orders of magnitude lower on the spectral range than the human eye can see.

The common consensus is that UPEs are a continuous stream of photons that emerge as a byproduct of biomolecular reactions in living cells that generate energy, which is why UPEs are sometimes referred to as biophoton emissions, or simply, biophotons.

In other words, as living cells generate energy through metabolism, they produce oxygen molecules as a byproduct that have excited electrons. When these excited electrons return to a lower energy state, they release photons (light) through a process called radiative decay.

Biophotons were first discovered in 1923 by a Russian and later Soviet biologist and medical scientist named Alexander Gurwitsch after he conducted various ‘mitogenetic’ experiments, such as placing photon-blocking barriers between onion roots, which prevented the plant from growing.

During the 1970s and 1980s, German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp coined the term "biophotons" after completing a series of thought-provoking yet controversial studies that suggested living cells continuously emit photons.

After completing over 150 studies and scientific journal papers, and writing eight books that address various questions related to biology, complementary medicine, theoretical physics, and biophones, Popp believed that UPEs could be involved in communication between cells, coherence, and possibly even help regulate biological processes.

While Popp’s hypothesis remains debatable, in the decades since, the faint light of UPEs has been found in a wide range of life forms, from tiny single-celled organisms and bacteria to larger plants and animals, including humans.

In fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that humans are quite luminescent, from as early as the moment of conception. Now, thanks to the two new studies I’ll tell you about soon, we know UPEs glow the brightest in the brain, that they change based on various cognitive tasks, and they only stop glowing after we die.

The Glowing Brain