November 12, 2012 10:48 am
The Science Behind These Amazing Photographs of the Human Eye
You might have seen these amazing images from photographer Suren Manvelyan before. They’re super-closeups of the human eye, revealing the beautiful complexity of our iris. But what are we actually seeing? What makes our eye look like a desert landscape?
The iris has two layers of fibers—radial fibers and sphincter fibers. Radial fibers are what pulls the pupil open, and sphincter fibers are what cause the pupil to close. Most muscles in our body are sheathed in some sort of membranous covering, but these fibers are open to the fluid in the front of the eye called the aqueous humor, which is why we can see them very distinctly in these images. The valleys and creases that surround the pupil are where the iris buckles when the pupil dilates.
With that, here are some more amazing images from Manvelyan.
Interestingly, certain drugs can cause eye color to change, but no one has yet been able to figure out how to change brown eyes into blue ones.
More from Smithsonian.com:
What Meets The Eye May Not Actually Be An Eye
‘Eye Cells’ Hone in on Eye Contact, Create Special Connections with Others
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Is this why in different light it appears as if some people’s eyes change colour slightly? As the fibers move can a person’s blue eyes appear to become a tad more green or something?
Comment by Elise — November 17, 2012 @ 6:14 am
Amazing insight for me also.A real “eye opener”
Comment by DR Raghuram — November 17, 2012 @ 9:53 am
The hexagonal reflections, are they from the endothelium?
Comment by Anne — November 18, 2012 @ 6:13 pm