Some can be created at home without any special equipment. For example, you can't mix red and green and create a "redgreen," but if you cross your eyes and have one eye see red and the other see green, you might see a new color you haven't seen before.
I also see weird colors in displays with a high frame rate that cycle between colors quickly. And at one point, I had a laser shot in my eye, which destroyed part of my vision. Initially, in that spot, I saw a weird iridescent silver-greenish color I had never seen before. Although that was pretty cool, I wouldn't recommend repeating this involuntary experiment just to see that color.
This story makes me remember that I had heard a fun fact a long time ago that many people have never actually seen the colour "violet" which is a single wavelength of visible light. Because there are very few things that reflect only this wavelength in reality. The purple colour we see is formed from a mixture of red and blue, whether it's something in nature, screen displaying or printing. I was so intrigued that I bought a 405nm laser torch and invited some friends to a home party to ‘See the real violet’. That single wavelength of purple really made a different experience, and with good friends, we had a great day.
The olo experiment was very interesting, and it told me that today we even have the technology to stimulate a single cone cell one by one in time. I know that we can't accurately display the olo on screen right now, which also prevents any of these articles from actually containing a picture of the olo. I think it's very close to #00FFEE, and I'm making it the colour of my Hacker News's top bar.
> many people have never actually seen the colour "violet" which is a single wavelength of visible light
The violet seen in a rainbow (in nature, not a photo) is legit single wavelength violet. Same with the rainbows created from shining white light through a prism.
It's true that you don't really get to see it in isolation very often though. Maybe some flowers, birds, or butterflies? Or maybe the purple glow you get from UV lights?
Because the cone isn't really a "blue" cone, and neither is the "red" one. The curves overlap in complex ways. A pure violet photon also slightly stimulates the long wavelength cone.
That's why red+blue=purple feels a bit like violet. It creates a similar double firing.
(And why red plus green gives an even more accurate yellow. The long and medium cones have a lot of overlap.)
It is technically the bluest color possible. What we perceive as true blue is different, and the brain has the weird imaginary magenta gradient between blue and red to confuse.
> The purple colour we see is formed from a mixture of red and blue, whether it's something in nature, screen displaying or printing.
Well if it’s on an RGB screen, or printed with CMYK inks then it’s not ‘real’ violet, but there must be plenty of natural and artificial pigments that are actually reflecting violet light and not blue + red light. I imagine any pure compound would be doing this. E.g cobalt phosphate (aka cobalt violet).
You could tell by illuminating a sample with different light sources. See metameric failure:
You did send a specific wavelength to your retina, but that wasn't violet. Because violet is a construct by your brain.
Color is not a property of wavelength. There's nothing special about photons wiggling in the 380 to 750nm range.
In general it's not necessary to be this pendatic, but given the topic here, I think it's important to realize this. It takes a while because we are so good at projecting our internal experience outward.
In my personal conception, violet is the kind of colour at the lower edge of the rainbow, which is a single wavelength. And purple is what the brain constructs. However, of course, the names of the colours are themselves vague.
Hmm if you talk to a colorist violet and purple are 2 different colors one more on the red and the other more on the blue. That’s still the construct of 2 wavelength colors. So a made up color of our brain that doesn’t exist.
The Guardian's article on this[1] includes a quote from an eminent colour expert at City:
> The claim left one expert bemused. “It is not a new colour,” said John Barbur, a vision scientist at City St George’s, University of London. “It’s a more saturated green that can only be produced in a subject with normal red-green chromatic mechanism when the only input comes from M cones.” The work, he said, had “limited value”.
identifying and shining light only on specific type of cells on retina through the iris is of limited value? I personally didn't know we even have that kind of precision.
It's just a typical response. What he means (in an admittedly unnecessary, snarky way) is that this is not going to revolutionise perceptual colour science. It's not going to be an out-of-this-world experience, nor will it change our understanding of how humans perceive colour. I personally think it's pretty cool, though.
This is really fascinating to me. I'm amazed they're able to image the cells of the eye with sufficient resolution and speed to achieve this. From the paper, "and targeting 10^5 visible-wavelength laser microdoses per second to each cone cell.".
If I understand correctly, they first use one type of spectroscopy (AO-OCT) to image the eye and build a map classifying the type of cells, and then use AO-SLO to find the positions of cells in real time. I assume that AO-OCT can't image at a sufficient rate for the second part (or they would just use one type?) so they need to first build this classification map, and then use it to match the position of cells to their type (e g., by overlaying the positions of cells with the classifications and making them line up).
There is a theory that specific shades of colors are difficult to recognize or differentiate unless you name them. I wonder how unique these 100% saturated colors would look without context compared to other colors.
Learning to see is a skill that we have to train. If you ever try to paint or draw a picture from a photographic reference, you will realize that you've spent your whole life blind. Even with the photo right in front of you, it can be extremely hard to paint certain details, because the brain simply refuses to accept the photographic reality when it has another idea of how an object should look.
As for colour, language does not help very much with being able to see and understand them. What helps more is playing with photographic software and getting a feel for the relations within a system like HSL, or RGB.
> Five subjects were recruited for this experiment ... Subjects 10001R, 10003L, and 20205R are coauthors on the paper and were blinded to the test conditions but were aware of the purposes of the study. The other two subjects were members of the participating lab at the University of Washington but were naive to the purposes of the study.
Is it normal for the authors to experiment on themselves and their colleagues like this? Or did they not like the idea of laser-stimulating the photoreceptors of random strangers?
I tooke a bodkin gh & put it betwixt my eye & the bone as neare to the Backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye with the end of it (soe as to make the curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles
Self experimentation is pretty common in psychophysics experiments. I think a big part of it is that the experiments are long and boring, so the scientists themselves are the only people likely to pay attention and perform the task accurately the whole time.
Yes - many psychophysics experiments require a LOT of time and careful attention that would be tricky to get from random participants. It’s often not at all an issue of safety or risk and more just the length, tedium, and motivation.
I swear I remember reading in the 80s about the Air Force having monochrome VR goggles consisting of a per-eye laser, magnetic oil lens for per-pixel depth focus, two perpendicular rotating mirrors for the raster scan and a curved glass lens to reflect and focus the raster scan on to the retina.
Microsoft Research had a project like this at one point, with "goggles" that used lasers on your retina instead of LCDs to project images. No idea what happened to the project, as I haven't heard anything recently.
My shitpost is that they're lucky they didn't trigger a buffer overflow :-) but really, it doesn't seem completely out of question to me that it's possible that some unintended and serious consequence could occur from your brain receiving some stimulus that it doesn't naturally receive. I guess maybe there's no biological analog, but obviously bad things can happen in circuits, computers, etc., when this happens.
The brain is remarkably resilient to that type of issue… Temporary buffer overflow (if you like) can be easily induced and observed with chemicals that modify function at the receptor level; Psychedelics being a classic example. (Worth noting there are many such chemicals used in medicine and research that induce overflow in function besides perception.)
What I find fascinating is the neurological resilience that can be observed at cellular and behavioral levels to bounce back after an event like that.
Non-chemical interventions, like adaption wearing special glasses that flip vision(1), are quickly accounted for by a healthy brain.
An easy way to percieve an oversaturated colour like this is to stare at one colour for a long time, and then switch to its complementary colour. The superposition of the colour and the afterimage of the same colour produces a more intense effect.
There are a bunch of "weird" colors that we don't see naturally. Wikipedia has a page on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color
Some can be created at home without any special equipment. For example, you can't mix red and green and create a "redgreen," but if you cross your eyes and have one eye see red and the other see green, you might see a new color you haven't seen before.
I also see weird colors in displays with a high frame rate that cycle between colors quickly. And at one point, I had a laser shot in my eye, which destroyed part of my vision. Initially, in that spot, I saw a weird iridescent silver-greenish color I had never seen before. Although that was pretty cool, I wouldn't recommend repeating this involuntary experiment just to see that color.
This story makes me remember that I had heard a fun fact a long time ago that many people have never actually seen the colour "violet" which is a single wavelength of visible light. Because there are very few things that reflect only this wavelength in reality. The purple colour we see is formed from a mixture of red and blue, whether it's something in nature, screen displaying or printing. I was so intrigued that I bought a 405nm laser torch and invited some friends to a home party to ‘See the real violet’. That single wavelength of purple really made a different experience, and with good friends, we had a great day.
The olo experiment was very interesting, and it told me that today we even have the technology to stimulate a single cone cell one by one in time. I know that we can't accurately display the olo on screen right now, which also prevents any of these articles from actually containing a picture of the olo. I think it's very close to #00FFEE, and I'm making it the colour of my Hacker News's top bar.
> many people have never actually seen the colour "violet" which is a single wavelength of visible light
The violet seen in a rainbow (in nature, not a photo) is legit single wavelength violet. Same with the rainbows created from shining white light through a prism.
It's true that you don't really get to see it in isolation very often though. Maybe some flowers, birds, or butterflies? Or maybe the purple glow you get from UV lights?
Why is violet in the rainbow not a very blue color? I would think it only activates the blue cones. 405nm is a nifty color.
Because the cone isn't really a "blue" cone, and neither is the "red" one. The curves overlap in complex ways. A pure violet photon also slightly stimulates the long wavelength cone.
That's why red+blue=purple feels a bit like violet. It creates a similar double firing.
(And why red plus green gives an even more accurate yellow. The long and medium cones have a lot of overlap.)
It is technically the bluest color possible. What we perceive as true blue is different, and the brain has the weird imaginary magenta gradient between blue and red to confuse.
You can make the difference between a single wavelength color and a composite color which looks the same, by looking at objects nearby.
If they are of one of the composite colors, they should appear in their natural hue
Else they will just appear darker
> The purple colour we see is formed from a mixture of red and blue, whether it's something in nature, screen displaying or printing.
Well if it’s on an RGB screen, or printed with CMYK inks then it’s not ‘real’ violet, but there must be plenty of natural and artificial pigments that are actually reflecting violet light and not blue + red light. I imagine any pure compound would be doing this. E.g cobalt phosphate (aka cobalt violet).
You could tell by illuminating a sample with different light sources. See metameric failure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color)#Metameric_f...
> Because there are very few things that reflect this wavelength in reality.
You mean few things that reflect only this wavelength? Because I would think anything white would reflect this wavelength just like any other.
Yes, I meant reflecting only this wavelength. Thanks.
How did you spread laser light over larger area?
The idea I'm having right now is reflecting it off of the rough side of aluminum foil.
I remember we just simply shone at a white wall.
You did send a specific wavelength to your retina, but that wasn't violet. Because violet is a construct by your brain.
Color is not a property of wavelength. There's nothing special about photons wiggling in the 380 to 750nm range.
In general it's not necessary to be this pendatic, but given the topic here, I think it's important to realize this. It takes a while because we are so good at projecting our internal experience outward.
Remember the blue / black dress?
> did send a specific wavelength to your retina, but that wasn't violet.
It was, by definition
> Color is not a property of wavelength.
Sure, it's a label
> There's nothing special about photons wiggling in the 380 to 750nm range.
There is - they activate different receptors your brain relies on, hence leading to a distinct (from other wavelengths) sensation
In my personal conception, violet is the kind of colour at the lower edge of the rainbow, which is a single wavelength. And purple is what the brain constructs. However, of course, the names of the colours are themselves vague.
Hmm if you talk to a colorist violet and purple are 2 different colors one more on the red and the other more on the blue. That’s still the construct of 2 wavelength colors. So a made up color of our brain that doesn’t exist.
"Violet" is a spectral color, which means that it is a color formed by a single wavelength of light. And it is a member of the rainbow (the spectrum).
"Purple" is a mixture of red and blue.
Violet is a real wavelength, below blue on the spectrum. Where it becomes invisible to the human eye, it starts getting called ultraviolet.
Magenta and purples are constructs by the brain, as you mention.
There's another ongoing thread about this paper,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43736005 ("Scientists claim to have found colour no one has seen before (theguardian.com)" — 27 comments)
The Guardian's article on this[1] includes a quote from an eminent colour expert at City:
> The claim left one expert bemused. “It is not a new colour,” said John Barbur, a vision scientist at City St George’s, University of London. “It’s a more saturated green that can only be produced in a subject with normal red-green chromatic mechanism when the only input comes from M cones.” The work, he said, had “limited value”.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/18/scientists-c...
identifying and shining light only on specific type of cells on retina through the iris is of limited value? I personally didn't know we even have that kind of precision.
It's just a typical response. What he means (in an admittedly unnecessary, snarky way) is that this is not going to revolutionise perceptual colour science. It's not going to be an out-of-this-world experience, nor will it change our understanding of how humans perceive colour. I personally think it's pretty cool, though.
This is really fascinating to me. I'm amazed they're able to image the cells of the eye with sufficient resolution and speed to achieve this. From the paper, "and targeting 10^5 visible-wavelength laser microdoses per second to each cone cell.".
If I understand correctly, they first use one type of spectroscopy (AO-OCT) to image the eye and build a map classifying the type of cells, and then use AO-SLO to find the positions of cells in real time. I assume that AO-OCT can't image at a sufficient rate for the second part (or they would just use one type?) so they need to first build this classification map, and then use it to match the position of cells to their type (e g., by overlaying the positions of cells with the classifications and making them line up).
There is a theory that specific shades of colors are difficult to recognize or differentiate unless you name them. I wonder how unique these 100% saturated colors would look without context compared to other colors.
Learning to see is a skill that we have to train. If you ever try to paint or draw a picture from a photographic reference, you will realize that you've spent your whole life blind. Even with the photo right in front of you, it can be extremely hard to paint certain details, because the brain simply refuses to accept the photographic reality when it has another idea of how an object should look.
As for colour, language does not help very much with being able to see and understand them. What helps more is playing with photographic software and getting a feel for the relations within a system like HSL, or RGB.
A great many languages don't differentiate between green and blue. There is simply one word for both.
A great deal of languages only have one blue color
> Five subjects were recruited for this experiment ... Subjects 10001R, 10003L, and 20205R are coauthors on the paper and were blinded to the test conditions but were aware of the purposes of the study. The other two subjects were members of the participating lab at the University of Washington but were naive to the purposes of the study.
Is it normal for the authors to experiment on themselves and their colleagues like this? Or did they not like the idea of laser-stimulating the photoreceptors of random strangers?
That is the tradition.
I tooke a bodkin gh & put it betwixt my eye & the bone as neare to the Backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye with the end of it (soe as to make the curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles
https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NAT...
Wow, I never knew that Newton risked retinal detachment to prove his theories.
Not a Neal Stephenson fan then? (The Baroque Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle)
Also google “Giles Brindley” for another great self-experimentation tale
Also Albert Hofmann and Alexander Shulgin
Self experimentation is pretty common in psychophysics experiments. I think a big part of it is that the experiments are long and boring, so the scientists themselves are the only people likely to pay attention and perform the task accurately the whole time.
Yes - many psychophysics experiments require a LOT of time and careful attention that would be tricky to get from random participants. It’s often not at all an issue of safety or risk and more just the length, tedium, and motivation.
What is meant by population scale in this context?
It’s jargon for “a lot of cones.” 10^3 to be specific.
Cool, thanks. I skimmed the article on how to introduce new colors to entire populations, that seemed like a really promising capability! lol.
As a colorblind person, I look forward to you normies arguing over whether a dress is green or “super green.”
Let’s just settle it with a spectrometer.
Spectromers don't measure the subjective perception of color.
Very Snow Crash, maybe. If I recall, the cyberdecks in that story used lasers to draw on the user's retinas, rather than an HMD.
I swear I remember reading in the 80s about the Air Force having monochrome VR goggles consisting of a per-eye laser, magnetic oil lens for per-pixel depth focus, two perpendicular rotating mirrors for the raster scan and a curved glass lens to reflect and focus the raster scan on to the retina.
Imagine walking through a shopping mall and suddenly having a Nike logo projected directly onto your retine, obscuring everything you see.
Microsoft Research had a project like this at one point, with "goggles" that used lasers on your retina instead of LCDs to project images. No idea what happened to the project, as I haven't heard anything recently.
it should be called octarine, since it was brought forth by the magic of science!
My shitpost is that they're lucky they didn't trigger a buffer overflow :-) but really, it doesn't seem completely out of question to me that it's possible that some unintended and serious consequence could occur from your brain receiving some stimulus that it doesn't naturally receive. I guess maybe there's no biological analog, but obviously bad things can happen in circuits, computers, etc., when this happens.
The brain is remarkably resilient to that type of issue… Temporary buffer overflow (if you like) can be easily induced and observed with chemicals that modify function at the receptor level; Psychedelics being a classic example. (Worth noting there are many such chemicals used in medicine and research that induce overflow in function besides perception.)
What I find fascinating is the neurological resilience that can be observed at cellular and behavioral levels to bounce back after an event like that.
Non-chemical interventions, like adaption wearing special glasses that flip vision(1), are quickly accounted for by a healthy brain.
1:https://www.npr.org/2012/12/14/167255705/a-view-from-the-fli...
Your comment reminded me of an old short story: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)
An easy way to percieve an oversaturated colour like this is to stare at one colour for a long time, and then switch to its complementary colour. The superposition of the colour and the afterimage of the same colour produces a more intense effect.
We can do this test on an ANN.