Darkness

Darkness inside the castle of Vlotho (Germany).

darkness or darkness is the absence of visible light.

Although darkness as the total absence of light perceived or visible to humans is relatively easy to achieve, pure or total darkness from a scientific point of view, it does not exist, because the scientific definition of light includes not only light in the visible spectrum, but the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and a certain amount of radiation exists in every place in the universe, even if it is imperceptible to the human eye. Thus, total darkness is only theoretically possible in conditions of absolute zero, or in the vicinity of a black hole.

The emotional response to the absence of light has inspired various metaphors in literature, symbolism, and the arts.

Earlier in history, it was sometimes seen as a substance in its own right, and appears in this form in some fantasy literature. Another name for darkness in this context is shadow.

In the sciences

The scientific definition of light includes the entire electromagnetic spectrum, not just visible light, and all objects radiate heat or radiation in the form of infrared light and/or gamma rays, very high-frequency light, which can penetrate even the denser materials, so it is physically impossible to create total darkness.

So, darkness, in science, is reaching a relatively low level of light. A dark object reflects fewer visible photons than other objects and therefore appears dim by comparison. For example, matte black paint does not reflect visible light and appears dark, whereas white paint reflects all visible light and therefore appears glossy. For more information, see color.

However, light cannot simply be absorbed without limit. Energy, like visible light, cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one type of energy to another. Most objects that absorb visible light re-emit it as infrared light. Thus, although an object may appear dark, it is most likely bright at a frequency that the human eye cannot detect. For more information, see blackbody.

A dark place has few, if any, light sources present, making everything hard to see, just like at night. Alternate exposure to light and darkness (day and night) has caused a wide variety of evolutionary adaptations to darkness. When a vertebrate - for example, the human being - is in a dark area, its irises dilate, thus allowing a greater amount of visible light to enter the eye, improving its night vision.

In poetry

As a poetic term, darkness can also mean the presence of shadows, evil, or depression.

Darkness can have a strong psychological impact. It can cause depression in people with seasonal depressive disorder (or winter blues), fear in people with nyctophobia, comfort in ligophiles, or attraction (as in gothic culture). These emotions are used to give force to literary images.

Religious texts often use darkness to make visual sense. In the Bible, darkness was the penultimate plague (Exodus 10:21) and the setting for "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8:12) One interpretation of the Qur'an says that those who transgress the boundaries of what is right will be doomed to suffer 'burning despair and ice-cold darkness'. (Nab 78.25) In Greek mythology, three layers of darkness surround Tartarus, a place for the worst sinners as low as Hades is far from the heavens.

The use of darkness as a Figure of Rhetoric has an ancient and enduring tradition. Shakespeare, working in the 16th and 17th centuries, had a character called Satan the "prince of darkness" (King Lear: III, iv) and gave darkness claws to devour love. (A Midsummer Night's Dream: I, i) Chaucer, a 19th century English writer XIV wrote that the job of the knights is to drive out the "works of darkness" Dante described Hell as a "tainted place of pure darkness".

Even in Old English, there were these words for darkness: heolstor, genip, and sceadu. Heolstor also meant "lair" and later became a holster (sheath); genip meant “mist” and fell out of use like many other strong verbs; sceadu meant “shadow” and continued to be used (shadow). The word "darkness" it evolved from deorc, which meant "dark".

In the arts

"Darkness Over Eden"Darkness on Eden") Photograph by Kabir Bakie at Eden Park, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 2004.

Artistically, dark can be used to emphasize, or contrast with, light. See Chiaroscuro for a more detailed discussion of the uses of such contrasts in the visual medium.

Multiple colored paints must be mixed to create dark tones, because each color absorbs certain frequencies of light. In theory, mixing the three primary colors, or the three secondary colors, would absorb all visible light and create a perfect black. In practice, of course, it is difficult to prevent the mixture from turning brown.

The color of a pixel, on a standard 24-bit computer monitor, is defined by three numbers between 0 and 255, one for the amount of red, one for the amount of green, and one for the amount of blue. Since the absence of light creates darkness, the darkest shades are close to (0,0,0).

Writing pens use darkness (usually in the form of blue or black ink) to create sharp marks on paper (which is commonly white or yellow). Lettering on a computer monitor is also often dark, and it is also customary to use blue or black lettering on a light background. This difference in light levels is called Contrast, which makes small fonts legible.

Darkness can be used in painting to create guidelines and voids, among other things. These figures are designed to draw the eye into the painting. Shadows add perspective.

In mythology

In Western tradition, darkness is also associated with evil, evil entities (such as demons or Satan), hell, or, especially in Egyptian mythology, the underworld. This concept can be considered to have epitomized the character of darkness reproduced by actor Tim Curry from the 1985 fantasy film Legend, where darkness takes the form of a 15-foot-tall stereotype of Satan. tall, ends with reddened skin, long horns, and cloven hooves. Darkness was also an important part of Gnostic religious systems; it was generally associated with evil. According to the Gnostics, the world is the result of a war between darkness and light.

In fiction

In fiction, darkness can symbolize undesirable events in various forms, often in the context of evil as mentioned above eg: dark miko. Evil is also seen in the dark in Thor: The Dark World. Dark tourism is travel to sites associated with death and suffering. It should be noted that darkness is not always evil.