>>13438616the light that we perceive in nature is incoherent. meaning over human perceivable time scales, the phase of the photons change randomly. there is no interference pattern as perceived by the light sensitive cells in our eyes.
also, according to our best understanding of light, it is a wave phenomenon, meaning any two photons can superimpose on top of one another without interacting. further, because light is quantized, it is emitted from all possible sources as monochromatic* wave packets.
combining these facts, any light we see is a collection of monochromatic wavepackets all at random phase relative to one another.
*and because these are quantized waves, the exact wavelength of the packet is uncertain. the True color of the light has a narrow variance depending on the energy and length of the emission.
As far as i recall, the best understanding of how eyes detect color is like this: there are 3 different color cells and an absolute light intensity cell in our eyes. when some mysterious light hits our eye, it activates all of these cells. these cells are uniquely tied to nerves and transmit their activation state to our brain.
if light X hits our eye at location Z and there hits color cell one with intensity a, hits color cell 2 with intensity b, and hits color cell 3 with intensity c, then the information our brain receives about this location (marked Z) is analogous to an ordered quadruple (Z,a,b,c). it is possible that a,b,c can uniquely identify color X.
