It is sometimes said that humans see best at yellow–green wavelengths because they have evolved under a Sun whose blackbody spectrum has a Wien peak in the green part of the spectrum. However, as a function of frequency, the solar blackbody spectrum peaks in the infrared. Why did human vision not evolve toward a peak sensitivity in this range, if the eye is an efficient quantum detector of photons? The puzzle is resolved if we assume that natural selection acted in such a way as to maximize the amount of energy that can be detected by the retina across a range of wavelengths (whose upper and lower limits are fixed by biological constraints). It is then found that our eyes are indeed perfectly adapted to life under a class G2 star. Extending this reasoning allows educated guesses to be made about the kind of eyesight that might have evolved in extrasolar planetary systems such as that of the red dwarf Gliese 876.

Topics
Blackbody, Exoplanetary systems, Red dwarfs, Educational assessment, Visual system
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2003
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