scientificpokedex:

Requested by pokecrettes

There’s no pokédex entry more confusing than ghost types! Which, I suppose, is why you love them so much. Dusknoir receives radio signals from the world of the dead, so let’s figure out how that happens.

If you want to learn more about antennas, I suggest reading Dedenne. While the pokédex does claim that Dusknoir gets signals from an antenna, I think it’s much more simple than that. I think he simply sees the radio waves.

After all, there is no difference between radio waves and the light we see, apart from the amount of energy they are carrying. Dusknoir can interpret the radio waves form the “spirit world” as easy as we can take in visual light, just like you are reading this now. This would also explain why only Dusknoir can read these signals. If it was a typical antenna transmission, anyone with the right frequency could tune in and listen to the dead’s podcast.

So Dusknoir simply has an optical organ (like an eyeball) that is sensitive to radio waves. Okay. There are animals in our world who can see far into the ultra violet or infrared, and even some that can “see” magnetic fields, but no animal we know of can see into the radio frequencies. Why?

At first, there’s simply no use for it. We don’t need radio waves for anything, there aren’t too many of them around so why would anything evolve to be able to see them? 

But that’s not quite the reason. Part of “seeing” and any of our other sense involves shifting electrons into different energy states, and only photons with high enough energy can do that. It’s physically impossible to see radio waves because they are so low energy they don’t have enough give an electron the boost it needs to even be sensed. Radiowaves can never be detected by eyeballs made as we know them.

But Dusknoir is different. If Dusknoir’s optical organ can react with radio waves, then it would have no problem seeing them. It would have to be made of some unknown atom or other particle, with such instability that something with as little energy as a radio wave will give it enough energy to make a difference. 

This would mean any visible light would just about be enough to blow this particle to pieces. Any time you tried to touch it it would break apart into nothing. Like a ghost. Not only have we described how Dusknoir can see radio waves, but we also just explained its ethereal nature.

Dusknoir is made of very unstable atoms or particles which respond to low-energy radio wave signals, enabling it to see and respond to them.

How the spirit world transmits demands is another question, but Dusknoir appears to be mind-controlled by it nonetheless. What about the other channels? It’s amusing to think of what Goldenrod’s Radio Tower top ten hits must look like to Dusknoir.