A team of scientists claims to have discovered a new color that humans cannot see without the help of technology.
Headquarters in the United States said that “experiencing” color, which they called “Olo”, shooting laser pulses in their eyes using a device that bears the name of the Oz magician.
Olo cannot be seen with the naked eye, but the five people who have seen it descend it as similar to bluish green.
What has the study found?
The professors of the University of California, Berkeley and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Washington published an article in the magazine, Science Advances, on April 18 in which they presented their discovery of a tone beyond the range of human vision.
They explained that they had devised a technique called Oz, which can “deceive” the human eye to see Olo. The technique is named after the Wizard of Oz.
In the wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, Frank Baum wrote a man who uses tricks to deceive the residents of the fictitious land of Oz to think he is a magician. For example, it is believed that the Esmeralda city, the capital of Oz, is so brilliant and vibrant that visitors have to wear special glasses to protect their eyes. The glasses are from the tricks of the magician, since they make the city look greener and grateful.
How do humans perceive color?
The human eye perceives color through three types of photoreceptors or “cone cells” in the retina. S Cones collect shorter blue wavelengths; M Cones detect medium, green wavelengths; and cones l detect longer red wavelengths.
“The thesis cones signs are sent through a complex series of cells in the retina that act to clean and integrate Jazeera.
The part of the brain to which the visual information is passed is the visual cortex.
How did the scientists find the ‘new’ color?
In the normal vision, the function of the M cones overlaps with the cones s and l neighbors, so any light that stimulates the cones M also activates the other two cones. The M cones do not work alone.
“There is no wavelength in the world that can stimulate only the cone,” said Ren NG, professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, in an article published on its website.
“I counted with the alarm clock of how it would look if you could stimulate all the MPo cells M. Would it like the greenest you have seen?”
Then, NG associated with Austin Roorda, one of the creators of OZ technology and teacher of optometry and vision science at UC Berkeley.
Oz, which Roorda described as “a microscope to look at the retina,” uses small laser light microdosis to attack individual photoreceptors in the eye. The equipment, which must be the use of highly stabilized duration, is already being used to study eye disease.
In 2018, the work used by OZ was from James Carl Fong, a doctoral student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in UC Berkeley. Hannah Doyle, another doctoral student in Berkeley, conducted the experiments through which human subjects could see the new color, OLO.
Is Olo really a new color?
Olo’s tone has always existed, simply falls beyond the spectrum of visible tones for the human eye. There are other similar tones that we cannot see. Therefore, Olo is not a new color that has emerged, from a physical or scientific perspective.
However, “from a sociolinguistic perspective, if people give new names to the colors that are previously indistinguishable thanks to this technology, then maybe! Everything depends on you,” Windram said.
How many people have seen Olo?
Five people have seen the “new” color: four men and a woman. They all had normal color vision.
Three of the subjects, including Roorda and NG, are the co -authors of the research work, while the other two are members of the laboratory participating at the University of Washington and did not know the purpose of the study before they separate.
How do you see Olo?
Those who have seen Olo describe it as a bluish or blue green green color, but one who had never seen before.
In UC Berkeley’s article, it is described as a “bluish green color of incomparable saturation.”
“It was like a deeply saturated bluish green … the most saturated natural color was pale by the comparation,” said Roorda.
“I was theme of this document, but I have seen Olo since they, and it is very striking. You know you are looking at something very green,” Doyle said.
The researchers said that an image of a bluish green square is the closest color combination for OLO. However, this square is not a square color. The naked human eye simply cannot see the shadow.
“We are not going to see Olo on any smartphone screen or on any TV at any time soon. And this is far, far beyond VR headphones technology,” NG said, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom.
What happens if some colors are invisible not because they are rare, but because we can physically see them?
UC Berkeley scientists discovered Olo, a tone that cannot be represented, only experienced.
Olo can never join the Pantone color system … or will it? Https: //t.co/sbrGVHW85g pic.twitter.com/rxmbutd7y2
– Pantone (@Pantone) April 23, 2025
Could this technology help people with color blindness?
Berkeley researchers are exploring if OZ technology could help people with color blindness.
Windram said success would depend on the cause of color in people. Deuteranomaly, which causes a decrease in green light sensitivity, is the most common form of color blindness.
“In this case, a miniaturized version of this technology could be theoretically used to correct this directly stimulating the cones when the correct color of the light hits them,” Windram said.
Windram said the advertising materials for research show images of the OZ experiment on a highly stabilized table.
“This would require a lot of work to miniaturize technology, and it is likely to be a long way.
How do we know how people ‘see’ color?
The concept of a main component of hashree, Windram explained: the physical, which has to do with the wavelengths of the light that meet with the eye; The neurological, which refers to how humans biologically process these light signs; And the social or linguistic component, which refers to how colors are named.
“In the end I can see a color and call it ‘red’, someone else can call it ‘rot’ or ‘red’ … but also another can look at it a little more closely and say ‘good is clear or’ crimson ‘.”
To prove this, the neuroscience researcher and the Patrick Mineult developed a website for entertainment purposes in September 2024, in which users can take a test to see how their perception of color with others is compared.
Humans can also perceive color differently due to differences in factors such as “temperature” or light. This was demonstrated when a photo of a dress went viral in 2015, dividing users of social networks on whether the dress was white, golden, or blue and black.
Windram explained that the people who decided what colors was the dress was based on preconceived notions of whether the photograph of the dress was tasks in warm lighting or cold lighting.
Do animals see color differently from humans?
Yes, different species can experience colors differently.
For example, humans process three wavelengths corresponding to the red, blue and green light, while the mantis shrimp, a small crustacean, can see 12 percite color channels instead of three. An article from the Academy of Sciences of Australia explains that Mantis shrimp can also detect ultraviolet and polarized light, which humans cannot see.
However, while the human eye can mix two colors and perceive an intermediate shadow as purple as a mixture of red and blue, the mantis shrimp eyes cannot mix color receptors.
Meanwhile, dogs only have two types of cones and mostly can see yellow and blue tones.
