Think you’ve seen all of it?
Not so, in accordance with a team of American researchers who say they’ve discovered a color that’s never been seen by the human eye before.
It’s a daring claim, considering estimates that the standard human eye can distinguish around 10 million colors.
But scientists on the University of California say the brand new color — which they’ve named “olo” — is a blue-green hue with an “unprecedented saturation” that sits outside the range of what the human eye can often see, and might only be stimulated by firing laser pulses into the attention.
“There’s no method to convey that color in an article or on a monitor,” Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team, told The Guardian in regards to the groundbreaking claim. “The entire point is that this will not be the color we see, it’s just not. The color we see is a version of it, nevertheless it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo.”
This image reflects the color researchers say is the closest match to the color seen in olo.
Ren Ng / University of California
The findings, published within the journal Science Advances on Friday, have been described by the study’s co-author, Prof. Ren Ng from the University of California, as “remarkable.”
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Using an experimental technique called “Oz,” researchers say they stimulated the human retina such that individuals saw a brand-new color. A laser beam was shone into the pupil of 1 eye of every of the study’s five participants, each who’ve normal color vision. (It’s value noting that three of the participants were also co-authors of the study.)
The human eye typically perceives color through a mix of signals which are activated when intensities of natural light reach three kinds of cone cells in the attention — S, M and L cones — that are sensitive to blue, green and red light. Normal color vision relies on the brain to interpret the signals across the retina, unlocking color perception.
The group of researchers wondered what would occur if they might cut out the wavelengths that the L and S cones react to and exclusively activate the M cones, that are most sensitive to green.
Using the Oz system, they used laser light to only goal participants’ M cone, leaving the S and L cones unaffected, and claim the five participants were treated to a color that doesn’t exist in nature.
“By activating only the M cones, we elicited a color beyond the natural human gamut,” the researchers wrote.
Ng told the BBC that olo is “more saturated than any color you’ll be able to see in the true world,” and explained how a brand new color could even come to be perceived.
“Let’s say you go around your whole life and also you see only pink, baby pink, a pastel pink,” he said. “After which in the future you go to the office and someone’s wearing a shirt, and it’s probably the most intense baby pink you’ve ever seen, and so they say it’s a brand new color and we call it ‘red.’”
Outside experts, nevertheless, have called the findings “open to argument” and a “matter of interpretation.”
Prof. John Barbur, a vision scientist at City St. George’s, University of London, explained to the BBC that “if, for instance, the red cone cells (L) were stimulated in large numbers, people would ‘perceive a deep red,’ however the perceived brightness may change depending on changes to red cone sensitivity, which is not unlike what happened on this study.”
“It’s not a brand new color,” Barbur told The Guardian. “It’s a more saturated green that may only be produced in a subject with normal red-green chromatic mechanism when the one input comes from M cones.” He told the outlet that the American team’s findings had “limited value.”
Ng, nevertheless, says his team’s research could help them study and treat color blindness or diseases that affect vision, but admits it’s not a color that laypeople, en masse, shall be exposed to within the near future.
“That is basic science,” said Ng. “We’re not going to see olo on any smartphone displays or any TVs any time soon. And this may be very, very far beyond VR headset technology.”
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