Is Gollum the coolest character in The Hobbit? Maybe, just maybe. OK, before I go on I should perhaps give a spoiler warning. There. You have been warned. Really, perhaps I don't need to give a spoiler warning for this story (book and movie) since it was published over 70 years ago. Would I have to give a spoiler alert before saying that both Romeo and Juliet die at the end of the play? Oops. Maybe I just spoiled that one too.
OK, now for the spoiler. Here is part of the book version of The Hobbit. In this part, Bilbo has just been separated from the rest of his party inside tunnels in a mountain.
If I were to make a movie of The Hobbit, here is what that scene would look like.
Yup. Super dark. Soon, Bilbo discovers that his sword glows enough for him to find his way around.
How Do We See?
How do we see anyway? Suppose there is a rock on the ground that you are looking at outside during the day time. Here is a diagram of Bilbo looking at a rock with his glowing sword.
Light comes off the sword. Why? Maybe it's radioactive or something. Anyway, this light then hits the rock and reflects off the rock. Some of this reflected light (but not all) reflects into Bilbo's eye where it is detected and interpreted by his brain. Some of the light from the sword also goes directly into his eye - so he can see the sword also. Really, these are the two ways that humans see things. They see something because that something gives off light or they see something because that something reflects light. Either way, light has to enter the eye in order to see something.
If there is no sword, if there is no light, then there is no seeing. The color black is what our brains give us when we don't see any light.
Here is an activity for you. Go find some friends (or make some friends) and ask the following:
These are the responses you will probably get:
- You will just see black, you won't be able to see the apple at all.
- At first it will be dark, but after some time your eyes will start to adjust and you will see the shape of the apple. It won't be red, it will be kind of gray.
Just about all answers will be similar to one of these two responses. I find about 20 percent give the first response and 80 percent say you will see something after your eyes adjust. If you ask the 20 percent how they know that is the answer, most will say they have been in a cave with the lights out. If you have ever done this, it is dark. Crazy dark (which is the same thing as super-dark). Some of these 20 percent have been in some other location with no lights - like a dark room for developing film. (Good luck finding one of these now.)
Why do so many people get this question wrong? Well, it turns out that there is usually some light. With even just a little bit of light, you can see something. Go out in the woods at night and you can probably see. If it is a full moon, you can see quite well. Turn off the lights in your bedroom and you can see. There is probably light from the street that can get through your window shades.
How Could You See in the Dark?
What about owls? How do they see so well at night? Well, some animals have eyes like telescopes. Telescopes do more than just magnify the image of distant objects. They also increase the light-gathering ability of a person. This is essentially what owls do. If you have a bigger eye (or a bigger pupil), you can get more light into your eye so that your brain can process it into an image.
Try this. Find a pair of binoculars. Look at the size of the lenses. They are quite a bit larger than your eye, right? Now look at the stars in the sky with your eye and then through the binoculars. You can see many more stars with the binoculars. This isn't because of magnification, rather it is because your eyes get more light from the sky.
Would big eyes or something like a pair of binoculars work in a cave? No. This method of "night vision" works by getting more light. If there is no light there (and trust me, there is NO light in a cave) then there is nothing to gather.
What About Night Vision Goggles?
I hate to spoil this for you, but these night vision goggles do they same thing as the binoculars (essentially). They just have image sensors along with tiny video monitors. The light hits the sensors (just like a video camera) and then the image is processed to enhance it to the point that you can see it. Along with normal visible light spectrum, these embedded cameras also collect infrared light that is close to the visible spectrum. Actually, most cameras can see things you can't see. We typically call this spectrum, the "near" infrared. It's the range that your remote control for your TV uses. Try looking at the remote though different cameras. On some of them, you will be able to see the little lights on the front of the remote flashing. Some cameras put an IR filter on the front lens to block this spectrum of light since you can't see it with the human eye.
Would night-vision goggles help Bilbo? No. Night-vision goggles use batteries and they don't have those kind of batteries in Middle-earth.
Thermal Images
What if you change the camera so that it sees in the far infra-red spectrum? In this case, we call this camera a thermal camera. Why? Well, it turns out that everything gives off light. The wavelength of light depends on the temperature of the object. For most objects, this wavelength of light falls in the "far" infra-red range. So, a thermal camera detects this range of wavelengths and converts it into a false-color image. In the image above, different colors represent objects with different temperatures (well, usually).
The image above shows two kids sitting on the ground. The wall behind them is much darker than they are since it is at about room temperature (maybe 20°C or 70°F). However, they are at a much warmer temperature (body temperature) so they look both brighter and at a different color. But what about the floor right in front of them? Notice how it is also brighter than the walls? It is probably the same temperature as the walls, but it is reflecting infrared light from the two kids.
But would this work for Bilbo in a cave? OK, let's assume he found some batteries. It would kind of work. It wouldn't show you any details in the cave walls if all the walls had the same temperature (which they typically do). However, if Bilbo was close, it would detect the reflected infrared from his body. Also he could turn the camera around and use the display as a mini-flashlight. Oh, he might be able to see warm spots on the ground if a person just walked by. It would depend on the sensitivity of the thermal camera and how long the footprint makers had passed.
Or he could take the batteries out of the thermal camera and use them with a piece of metal to short the batteries and make a fire.
What About Bats?
Yes, bats live in caves too. However, they don't usually live really far into the cave where it is pitch-black. However, they do have another method for "seeing" things. Echolocation. The basic idea is to use ultrasonic sound. You (you, the bat) make these high-frequency squeaks. The sound then goes out and bounces off stuff and comes back to your ears. By listening to this sound, you can figure out how far away stuff is based on the time it takes for the sound to come back. I guess you can determine shape based on the type of reflected sound. Yes, this isn't really "seeing," but it is "sensing."
If Bilbo had thought of this (and practiced beforehand), he could use echolocation. His squeaks probably wouldn't be ultrasonic and the goblins could probably also hear anything Bilbo could hear.
Cave Crayfish
This is a cave crayfish (or crawfish). They live in parts of the cave that have no sunlight. They are blind and don't see. So, then how do they see? Can't you read? I just said they are blind and don't see.
Tolkien's Idea of Seeing in the Dark
How does Tolkien represent seeing in the dark? Clearly, from the above quote from The Hobbit, Bilbo can't see in the dark. But what about Gollum? Bilbo wanders around and finds the underground lake where Gollum lives. Gollum watches him from his island in the lake. How? Well, if Bilbo had his sword out, there could be a little bit of light. Perhaps enough for Gollum to see him.
Gollum then decides to have a closer inspection of Bilbo. After a short altercation (where Gollum thinks it might be OK to eat Bilbo), Bilbo puts on the ring and becomes invisible. Gollum thinks that Bilbo is running away toward the exit when in fact Bilbo is just sitting there being invisible. After Gollum races past Bilbo, we have this passage:
And then, later ...
What does this mean? Who knows for sure. When I read this, it seems to suggest that Gollum can see in the dark because his eyes give off light and Bilbo can see this light. If Tolkien was younger, I would say that he had been influenced by the scenes of darkness in shows like Looney Tunes cartoons. But that can't be true. Maybe instead, Looney Tunes was inspired by Tolkien. Here is what Tolkien must have imagined Gollum to look like in the dark:
It's rather interesting that the Gollum method of night vision agrees with common ideas about seeing. For the people that think you can see something in a completely dark room, some of them have the idea that seeing has to do with your eyes. Well, it clearly has something to do with your eyes. But one common idea is that "something" comes out of your eyes so that you can see. Maybe this is light, maybe it is "vision" or maybe something else. But with this idea, the eyes are like active sonar or echolocation in that they send out something to actively see.
What Other Ways Could Gollum See?
Say that Gollum can see in the dark but his eyes don't "light up." In that case, what other options do we have to make things work? First, there is the infrared eyes. Suppose his eyes can detect both near and far infra red. Like I said above, this would just sort of work. He wouldn't be able to see very far and he would have to use the infrared from his body to see things close by.
What other options are there? What about neutrinos? What if there is light in this underwater lake? Light from the interaction between neutrinos and the water. What is a neutrino? It is a very low-mass particle without any electrical charge. This makes them difficult to detect. One way to detect them is to look for light they create as they pass through materials like water.
The amount of light produced isn't very much, but you can detect it. Here is an image of the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.
You can see the water in the detector as it is half full (or half empty) along with some people in a boat checking on the detectors. It's cool, isn't it? So, maybe in Middle-earth the neutrino flux is so high that there is even more light produced from the water in the lake. Maybe that's why Gollum lives there.
