“The question whether young women blush in the dark is a very difficult one,” wrote 18th-century German scholar Georg Lictenberg.
While it seems a trivial question, it was also impossible to answer.
In the dark, no one can see the blushing. Turn on the light, and it’s no longer dark. Charles Darwin even offered up a comment on the problem (he reckoned women probably could blush in the dark).
Technology has come to humanity’s aid in providing an answer.
Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands collaborated on an experiment in which they pointed a heat-sensitive camera at a woman in a dark room and asked her to blush.
When she claimed to be blushing (they picked someone who could do it at will), there was more heat coming from her cheeks, showing that blood had rushed to the surface.
So it turns out that women can blush in the dark. Keep smashing those boundaries, science!
While it seems a trivial question, it was also impossible to answer.
In the dark, no one can see the blushing. Turn on the light, and it’s no longer dark. Charles Darwin even offered up a comment on the problem (he reckoned women probably could blush in the dark).
Technology has come to humanity’s aid in providing an answer.
Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands collaborated on an experiment in which they pointed a heat-sensitive camera at a woman in a dark room and asked her to blush.
When she claimed to be blushing (they picked someone who could do it at will), there was more heat coming from her cheeks, showing that blood had rushed to the surface.
So it turns out that women can blush in the dark. Keep smashing those boundaries, science!
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