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Science

Scientists Claim To Have Found Color No One Has Seen Before (theguardian.com) 75

Posted by BeauHD from the limited-value-but-cool-nonetheless dept.
Researchers at UC Berkeley claim to have induced a previously unseen color by using lasers to stimulate only the M cones in the retina, creating a visual experience beyond the natural limits of human perception. Called olo, the color is described as a highly saturated blue-green but is only visible through direct retinal manipulation. The Guardian reports: "We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented color signal but we didn't know what the brain would do with it," said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. "It was jaw-dropping. It's incredibly saturated."

The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the color, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina. "There is no way to convey that color in an article or on a monitor," said Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team. "The whole point is that this is not the color we see, it's just not. The color we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo." The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Scientists Claim To Have Found Color No One Has Seen Before More | Reply

Scientists Claim To Have Found Color No One Has Seen Before

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  • AKA 'two' (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Saturday April 19, 2025 @04:52AM (#65316573) Homepage

    The name olo comes from the binary 010, indicating that of the L, M and S cones, only the M cones are switched on.

    So I guess we can also call this colour 'Two' too.

    • Wym, its 'Ten'.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        I hope you don't write code if that is what you think. They say "binary 010" i.e. 0 x 2^2 + 1 x 2^1 + 0 x 2^0 = 2.

        • Whatchu talkin' about Willis? It's clearly 8 (in octal)
          In other news, this new color is called olou outside America.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          Right back at ya. "Ten base 2" would be correct., "ten" "10" and "010" are the same, the difference here is an assumed base. "Ten" does not assume "base ten", how could it? Chicken and egg.

          I'd call you a modern programmer, totally unaware of all the shit you don't know.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ukoda ( 537183 )
            "Ten base 2" is fine. Likewise "ten" and "10" are fine where no base has been provided. While I think in some older environments "010" would imply octal, normally assuming 10 is reasonable. My point was the original quote specifically said binary so only "Two" or "Ten base 2" would express the same value. If no base is given then "Ten" does assume "base ten" in normal communications.

            Sure I'm a modern programmer and don't know everything, I have only be coding since the 1970s.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Nighttime ( 231023 )

        There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who didn't expect a joke in trinary.

    • And when only the L and S cones are stimulated, we call it "lol".

  • To have found a first post never seen before.

  • Octarine (Score:5, Funny)

    by Toutatis ( 652446 ) on Saturday April 19, 2025 @04:58AM (#65316583)
    They have loose an opportunity to call it octarine, the colour of magic.

  • This looks really similar to the glow given off by uranium glass under UV light.

    • Neglecting the genuine issues of colour reproduction on computer screens, and the encoding of colour information across systems ... that looks nothing like the colour I get from my uranium glass pitcher and tumblers with my UV lamp. Which is a long-wavelength mercury lamp. That's more the colour I'd associate with long-chain hydrocarbon molecules (C14 ~C20 chains, but it's very hard to get calibrations standards for that, so I'm referring to natural mixtures with analyses form GC-MS). Which is a fairly unli

  • Colors (Score:3)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Saturday April 19, 2025 @05:09AM (#65316613)
    Can anyone say that manipulation with anything is producing a real color? I mean, manipulate yourself with LSD and you will see colors that don't exist.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ukoda ( 537183 )
      Yea, they kind of worded it backwards. All colours are real colours, it just that your eyes can not perceive real colours, only a likely guess as to what colour something might be and sometimes a colour it can't be. So we can't see the difference between just yellow and the pair of colours red and green, but can correctly say they neither case is blue.
      • Allow me to elaborate. From memory, we have three sort of color sensors in our eyes. But they are not very good. They are wide banded, meaning that there is always an overlap: multiple types are triggered for all colors. If you could only trigger one type of sensor, you'd perceive a new color. Never tought we'd be able to see this.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ukoda ( 537183 )
          Yes, I was impressed with them tracking the eye with enough speed and precision they could hit an individual cone then move on to the next one to effectively create an area of colour.

          With the issue of wide bandwidth cones I would not say that was "not very good", as with only three wavelengths sensed you need their response to be wide enough to respond to colours in between or else colours like cyan, yellow and magenta would probably appear to be black. What would be cool to research is people with tetr

      • All colours are real colours

        That depends on how you define colour. In physics we tend to define colour as a proxy for the wavelength of light and, with such a definition, there are many non-colours such as white and magenta which are mixtures of different wavelengths and black which is just the absence of light. With this definition this paper is not a new colour at all since it is not creating a new wavelength of light that nobody has ever seen.

        You can also define colour as the response of your eye. In this case white, magenta, b

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Actually, some folks are starting to work on that third meaning. IFAIK they haven't gotten very far yet, only "These areas are active when that image is see, but not when that other image is seen". Still, they are tracing out activity patterns in the brain, and some of them seem to be consistent.

          So you can expect your third meaning of color to feature in a slashdot headline in 5 years or so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ukoda ( 537183 )
          Yes, I would agree with you statements. For clarity when I said 'real colours' I was referring to your first definition, the wavelength of the photons entering the eye, so I am not treating white as a colour. Of course once the photons reach the retina the other definitions you mention become relevant, and the whole point of their research, which I think is pretty cool, regardless of what applications it may have.

    • Can anyone say that manipulation with anything is producing a real color? I mean, manipulate yourself with LSD and you will see colors that don't exist.

      Uh, this manipulation is highly controlled and predictable. As in repeatable. The kind of tech you could put in computers, monitors, and eventually glasses if it catches on.

      Good luck writing the product description on a bottle of LSD gummies. Talk about YMMV.

    • Can anyone say that manipulation with anything is producing a real color?

      Given that "colour" and it's perception is an entirely human construct, yes.

      I mean, manipulate yourself with LSD and you will see colors that don't exist.

      So you just called these non-existent things colours, emphasising my point.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flink ( 18449 )

      "Real color" is sort of a meaningless distinction. Color isn't something physical or objective. A certain wavelength of light strikes the retina causing a pattern of electrical signal to be sent to the brain. Your visual cortex does some processing on it and another signal is sent to your pre-frontal cortex and you experience "color". This is called qualia, the subjective experience of a sensation. It doesn't really have a physical analog. It's a synthesis of signals in your conscious mind, something

      • My point is that colour is just a name for the range that the human body perceives. If you extend that range through some sort of trickery, that just means that you are tricking the body into perceiving something different, not that you are seeing a new colour.

    • I mean, manipulate yourself with LSD and you will see colors that don't exist.

      IKR? I was half expecting a subtitle for this story saying, "In related news, scientists realize they've never taken LSD."

    • I have visual snow and I feel like this probably the electric blue-green that I see when my eyes are closed, it also has an electric magenta color component too.

  • could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina. Geez, was this a waste of time and $$$.

  • If there is a form of color blindness where only M cones are present, then the people afflicted can see no colors but this olo.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "monochromacy" would be either no functioning cone types or one functioning cone type. It is rare and it appears to be dominated by the "no cone types" version. It very well could exist, but a few 19 year olds at a university never considered it so it doesn't exist, according to their groundbreaking research.

      Whatever the actual facts in this case, the brain would adapt and the result would be ordinary for those individuals. More interestingly, is this experiment avoiding stimulation of rods? If so, who

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        The one cone type would still also have the rods stimulated.

        Meanwhile, stimulation just one particular part of a mechanism in isolation and seeing what happens is the very foundation of reverse engineering. Effectively, everything we know about our own bodies is reverse engineering.

        So this could turn out to be a party trick, or we could learn new things about human visual processing. The only way to find out which it is is to give it a try.

  • presumably describes in his "Color out of Space" this color, which nobody has ever seen yet.

  • https://web.archive.org/web/20120226202256/https://negativland.com/squant/index.html [archive.org]

    Wow, I didn't realize they took that down in 2012. Also, a 700x502 image looks a lot smaller in these days when the smallest common monitor size is 1080p.

  • Chalmers: Uh... Aurora borealis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen!?
    Skinner: Yes!
    Chalmers: ...May I see it?
    Skinner: ...No.

  • The color we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo

    "Pales" ... I see what you did there!

    • Re: Pales (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KeithConover ( 845226 )
      Doesn't anyone read Terry Pratchett? As in, "The Colour of Magic?" The color is obviously octarine!

      • No, itâ(TM)s Hooloovoo, and it is smarter than you. Now where did I leave my towel?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        No. He describes how to see octarine, and this is a different approach.

        To see octarine, stand a short distance from a brick wall, lower your head, and run full speed into the wall. The color you see right before you die is ocatarine.

  • SO MUCH WRONG (Score:3)

    by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Saturday April 19, 2025 @08:33AM (#65316797)

    First off, "color" is a result in the mind after interpreting signals originating in the eye. It is NOT the response of particular cones, it is what you "think". Second, a "color" can be the result of multiple combinations of inputs, metamers are different spectral compositions that appear to be the same color to the eye/brain. Colors can be the result of multiple input combinations, there is no way to assert that the "color" here is unique, only that the stimulation is unique.

    Worse yet, individuals have slightly different frequency responses in their eyes due to genetic variation, and some women are even tetrachromats. I suspect this complicates this particular work, and I'd imagine their technique may not work on all people. Worse, some people may experience unique stimulations beyond these guys' understanding, or maybe no one does, after all variations in the eye do not mean there are variations in color perception. Color perception is pre-wired.

    Even the language here is suggestive that they know what they are saying is dishonest. What they've done is generate unique nerve firings in the eye, they don't really know what the brain does with it. Color is in the brain, not the eye.

    And for the obligatory ridiculous quotes:
    "...induced a previously unseen color ... beyond the natural limits of human perception."

    No, what they claim to have done is allegedly induce a previously unexperienced signaling from the eye, and it CANNOT be "beyond the natural limits of human perception" because of it were they could not have "induced" it. This is just undergraduate levels of stupid.

    "We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented color signal but we didn't know what the brain would do with it,"
    A "color signal" and what it "looks like" are the two different things. Associating a "color signal" with what it "looks like" ignores that the world is filled with metamers. "What the brain would do with it" is literally the difference between what it "looks like" and a "color signal".

    "The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the color..."
    More accurately, to give a sense of the hue. But this underscores how absurdly sensationalist this all is. The color is one we've all experienced, the fact that we have a name for it tells us that. It's just slightly more saturated, allegedly. We have color spaces that are filled with colors we don't often, or never, see. It's not uncommon at all. I'd suspect this "color" is, in fact, defined by existing color spaces and this research is, in fact, merely an outgrowth of an attempt to produce wider gamut displays. Laser sources for tri-stimulus output is how we have gotten wide-gamut displays, The spectrum is filled with an infinite number of unique wavelengths, our color perception is laughable compared to what it could be, and to what exists in other species.

    "... but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina."
    That is complete bullshit. We can experience every possible hue, hue is a function of the brain and the fact that hue is defined is evidence that we are able to experience it. Hue is a mathematical expression of what we can experience, and it is a component of color, it is not color.

    "The whole point is that this is not the color we see, it's just not. The color we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo."
    Two different colors are not the same. Fabulous. Colors with the same hue are "versions" of one another? OK, sure. Pales in comparison? Probably not, but if we assume "pales" to mean less saturated then probably, by just a little bit. All massive self-promotion over nothing.

    This entire claim is most certainly a bunch of undergraduates thinking they have done something groundbreaking. It's an insult that this makes any news.

    • Individual excitation of single cell receptors using lasers, adaptive optics, and motion tracking of the retina of a live subject, isn't something "a bunch of undergraduates" can typically do, and *much less* something an Ethics committee would let them do.

      Some of your criticism comes from the journalist account, which lacks rigour in using technical words.

      "... but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina."
      That is complete bullshit.

      Here for example, you say it's bullshit, but it only is the journalist that doesn't really know what hue means, or incorrect uses it interchangeably with

    • But this underscores how absurdly sensationalist this all is. The color is one we've all experienced, the fact that we have a name for it tells us that. It's just slightly more saturated, allegedly.

      For someone who was dissecting the article sentence by sentence I feel like you fundamentally failed to understand the point those sentences made.

  • There are a lot of colors that have never been seen (by humans). But the article says they stimulated the retina, so it should probably be: Scientists have seen a color that have no one seen before.

  • I wonder what I would see?

    • Depends if you are missing the M or the L, if the former, nothing since that's all they stimulated.
      If missing the L, their description matches where normally the S and L are lowest (cyan). If you take the L out of that equation, with no signal in the blue range you'd be left with the same as you perceive from green-red ranges would be my guess.

  • ...have never seen infrared.

  • A filter that is only transparent to the narrow range of light where M is at peak sensitivity but S and L are almost inactive seems like it might get you close with a lot less effort.

    It'd be fun to try, anyway.

  • I am pretty people have “seen” this color before.

  • Holy shit, they neurologically induced negative green?

  • Scorange (Score:3)

    by spudnic ( 32107 ) on Saturday April 19, 2025 @04:52PM (#65317735)

    They should have named it Scorange so we'd finally have a word that rhymes with orange! Why don't they think of these things?

  • ...it's clear that those who see this color have learned what a previously unknown shade of green looks like. This amounts to a kind of scientific confirmation of Frank Jackson's knowledge argument (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/).

  • (Shameless They Live reference.)

  • I see...

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