Note: Im tired and misread your question as something like “how can non-human creatures/aliens tell the difference between colours?”. I wrote too much now to delete this haha.
That gets super weird because a “color” is a pretty subjective concept. It’s really just photons (light) vibrating at certain frequencies. We developed special organs for detecting certain frequencies (eyes) when we were still fish-like things living underwater. Because of that we can mostly see colors that propagate through water fairly well. There are whole classes of color we know exist but can’t see (ultraviolet and infrared).
It gets even weirder because some HUMANS seem to not even see colors the way western people do. The Himba language has a single word, “buru,” that covers what Western cultures consider both green and blue. This makes it more difficult for them to quickly differentiate between a blue square and a group of green squares in a visual test. The Himba language has many words for different shades of green that Western languages do not, which allows them to easily distinguish between subtle variations of green that are very difficult for English speakers to see. So colors are also a cultural/linguistics thing that extends beyond pure science.
To start breaking away from human centric stuff and get into aliens, we should look at other animals which evolved eyes separately from humans. Eyes actually evolved several times in completely separate animal lineages (convergent evolution). But the cool thing is that some animals who also have eyes, see colors in fundamentally different ways because they have different cones and brains.
The eyes of mantis shrimp and birds for example evolved completely separately from the eyes of humans and for different reasons. We don’t share a common ancestor which has eyes.
Birds and some insects are often tetrachromats, possessing four types of cones. They can see colors in the ultraviolet spectrum, which is invisible to humans. This allows them to see patterns on flowers and other organisms that are used for navigation or to attract mates.
Mantis shrimp have the most complex color vision known, with up to 12 types of photoreceptors. Scientists are still trying to understand exactly how their brain processes this information.
Many animals have light-sensitive organs that are not even considered eyes. This is known as extraocular photoreception, and it serves a variety of purposes beyond image formation.
Octopuses and Cuttlefish have an ability to change the color and texture of their skin for camouflage. It turns out that their skin contains the same light-sensitive proteins (opsins) found in their eyes. This “dermal light sense” allows their skin to respond directly to light, helping them to match their surroundings without the need for input from their brain.
Flatworms have eyes that are sensitive to light and dark, but they also have other light-sensitive cells scattered across their bodies. These cells help them to sense light well enough to get around but not much more.
So light doesn’t even neasesarily need to be a “visual” thing at all. It really just comes down to having some sensory organ that can detect photons.
Carl Sagan, and E. E. Salpeter, proposed a hypothetical ecosystem of creatures living in Jupiter’s atmosphere. I think this could be a jumping off point for thinking about real “alien” eyes. Especially because Jupiter could not be more different than earth.
Their paper didn’t specify the details of the creatures’ eyes, but it did suggest a possible visual system. Given the low light levels in the atmosphere, they would likely be highly sensitive to visible light, which is primarily sunlight reflecting off the clouds.
Sagan and Salpeter imagined three types of lifeforms:
Sinkers: These are microscopic organisms, like bacteria or plankton, that live on organic molecules and drift down into the deeper, hotter layers of the atmosphere. They likely would not have complex eyes, but instead, would have simple photoreceptors to detect light for photosynthesis.
Floaters: These are gigantic, balloon-like creatures that could be miles wide. They would maintain buoyancy by heating the gases inside their bodies and would graze on the smaller sinkers. Their eyes would probably be large and highly sensitive to capture as much light as possible in the perpetually cloudy environment.
Hunters: These are agile, jet-propelled predators that would feed on the massive floaters. Their eyes would need to be exceptionally well-developed for navigating the turbulent atmosphere and for tracking their enormous prey from a distance.
It is highly unlikely that these hypothetical creatures would see the same colors as humans. Their vision would be fundamentally different, tailored to the unique lighting conditions and atmospheric composition of Jupiter.
Since Jupiter is much farther from the sun, the intensity of sunlight is significantly lower than on Earth. FWIW though, Jupiter does produce a bit of it’s light. The planet’s thick atmosphere, which contains large amounts of methane and ammonia, absorbs red and orange light, and scatters blue and green light. This gives Jupiter its characteristic red and orange color bands, but the light that would be available for vision would be predominantly in the blue, green, and ultraviolet ranges.
Instead of seeing a broad spectrum of colors like humans, these creatures might have a specialized form of color vision focused on the parts of the spectrum that penetrate the atmosphere best. This calls back to the idea that human eyes evolved underwater and that’s why we can mostly see the frequencies that propagate well through water. They might be very good at differentiating subtle shades of blue and green, and even be able to see into the ultraviolet spectrum, which is abundant in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere due to the sun’s radiation.
Sagan also mused on the possibility of using radio waves for communication among these creatures. This would be a more effective form of long-distance communication than vision in an environment with limited light and atmospheric turbulence.
So to wrap this up and get to the point of your original question, aliens could possiblity see colors like we do but would very likely not. It’s even possible they would detect light with an organ more like “ears” than eyes. Where instead of “seeing” sound, they “hear” it like flatworm or octopus “feels” it.
Note: Im tired and misread your question as something like “how can non-human creatures/aliens tell the difference between colours?”. I wrote too much now to delete this haha.
That gets super weird because a “color” is a pretty subjective concept. It’s really just photons (light) vibrating at certain frequencies. We developed special organs for detecting certain frequencies (eyes) when we were still fish-like things living underwater. Because of that we can mostly see colors that propagate through water fairly well. There are whole classes of color we know exist but can’t see (ultraviolet and infrared).
It gets even weirder because some HUMANS seem to not even see colors the way western people do. The Himba language has a single word, “buru,” that covers what Western cultures consider both green and blue. This makes it more difficult for them to quickly differentiate between a blue square and a group of green squares in a visual test. The Himba language has many words for different shades of green that Western languages do not, which allows them to easily distinguish between subtle variations of green that are very difficult for English speakers to see. So colors are also a cultural/linguistics thing that extends beyond pure science.
To start breaking away from human centric stuff and get into aliens, we should look at other animals which evolved eyes separately from humans. Eyes actually evolved several times in completely separate animal lineages (convergent evolution). But the cool thing is that some animals who also have eyes, see colors in fundamentally different ways because they have different cones and brains.
The eyes of mantis shrimp and birds for example evolved completely separately from the eyes of humans and for different reasons. We don’t share a common ancestor which has eyes.
Birds and some insects are often tetrachromats, possessing four types of cones. They can see colors in the ultraviolet spectrum, which is invisible to humans. This allows them to see patterns on flowers and other organisms that are used for navigation or to attract mates.
Mantis shrimp have the most complex color vision known, with up to 12 types of photoreceptors. Scientists are still trying to understand exactly how their brain processes this information.
Many animals have light-sensitive organs that are not even considered eyes. This is known as extraocular photoreception, and it serves a variety of purposes beyond image formation.
Octopuses and Cuttlefish have an ability to change the color and texture of their skin for camouflage. It turns out that their skin contains the same light-sensitive proteins (opsins) found in their eyes. This “dermal light sense” allows their skin to respond directly to light, helping them to match their surroundings without the need for input from their brain.
Flatworms have eyes that are sensitive to light and dark, but they also have other light-sensitive cells scattered across their bodies. These cells help them to sense light well enough to get around but not much more.
So light doesn’t even neasesarily need to be a “visual” thing at all. It really just comes down to having some sensory organ that can detect photons.
Carl Sagan, and E. E. Salpeter, proposed a hypothetical ecosystem of creatures living in Jupiter’s atmosphere. I think this could be a jumping off point for thinking about real “alien” eyes. Especially because Jupiter could not be more different than earth.
Their paper didn’t specify the details of the creatures’ eyes, but it did suggest a possible visual system. Given the low light levels in the atmosphere, they would likely be highly sensitive to visible light, which is primarily sunlight reflecting off the clouds.
Sagan and Salpeter imagined three types of lifeforms:
Sinkers: These are microscopic organisms, like bacteria or plankton, that live on organic molecules and drift down into the deeper, hotter layers of the atmosphere. They likely would not have complex eyes, but instead, would have simple photoreceptors to detect light for photosynthesis.
Floaters: These are gigantic, balloon-like creatures that could be miles wide. They would maintain buoyancy by heating the gases inside their bodies and would graze on the smaller sinkers. Their eyes would probably be large and highly sensitive to capture as much light as possible in the perpetually cloudy environment.
Hunters: These are agile, jet-propelled predators that would feed on the massive floaters. Their eyes would need to be exceptionally well-developed for navigating the turbulent atmosphere and for tracking their enormous prey from a distance.
It is highly unlikely that these hypothetical creatures would see the same colors as humans. Their vision would be fundamentally different, tailored to the unique lighting conditions and atmospheric composition of Jupiter.
Since Jupiter is much farther from the sun, the intensity of sunlight is significantly lower than on Earth. FWIW though, Jupiter does produce a bit of it’s light. The planet’s thick atmosphere, which contains large amounts of methane and ammonia, absorbs red and orange light, and scatters blue and green light. This gives Jupiter its characteristic red and orange color bands, but the light that would be available for vision would be predominantly in the blue, green, and ultraviolet ranges.
Instead of seeing a broad spectrum of colors like humans, these creatures might have a specialized form of color vision focused on the parts of the spectrum that penetrate the atmosphere best. This calls back to the idea that human eyes evolved underwater and that’s why we can mostly see the frequencies that propagate well through water. They might be very good at differentiating subtle shades of blue and green, and even be able to see into the ultraviolet spectrum, which is abundant in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere due to the sun’s radiation.
Sagan also mused on the possibility of using radio waves for communication among these creatures. This would be a more effective form of long-distance communication than vision in an environment with limited light and atmospheric turbulence.
So to wrap this up and get to the point of your original question, aliens could possiblity see colors like we do but would very likely not. It’s even possible they would detect light with an organ more like “ears” than eyes. Where instead of “seeing” sound, they “hear” it like flatworm or octopus “feels” it.