In a revolutionizing study published in Science Advances on April 18, researchers have made the discovery of a new colour called ‘Olo’, which is beyond human sight. The research identifies that merely five people have seen this ultra-saturated color—an experience which has been termed as “jaw-dropping.”
How the Colour Was Seen
Scientists, with researchers from the University of California, Berkeley as the lead experts, employed the help of laser pulses to control the human retina so that they could stimulate regions of the eye that are otherwise inactivity to natural light.
In order to view Olo, researchers shot laser beams into the M cones of the retina, not naturally stimulated by normal wavelengths of light. Such artificial stimulation opened up a color that the human eye would never see in normal life.
“An Unprecedented Colour Signal”
‘We had guessed that it would have an unprecedented colour appearance but we didn’t have any idea how the brain was going to treat it. It was jaw-dropping. It’s very, very saturated,’ said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer and principal investigator.”.
Although scientists posted a photo of a turquoise square to provide a rough approximation of Olo, they recognized that digital images are far from capturing the color’s intensity.
No Way to Reproduce Olo in Daily Tech
“There is no way to describe that colour in an article or on a screen. The point is that this isn’t the colour we see, it’s just not. The colour we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of Olo,” said Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team.
Researchers highlighted that Olo cannot be viewed through smartphones, TVs, or even the latest virtual reality (VR) headsets.
“We’re not going to see Olo on any smartphone screens or any televisions anytime soon. And this is way, way beyond VR headset technology,” they mentioned.
The Science of How Human Eyes See Colour
The human eye detects millions of colours through cone cells in the retina, which are sensitive to specific light wavelengths:
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L cones respond to long wavelengths like red,
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S cones to short wavelengths like blue,
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M cones, found in the middle of the retina, aren’t stimulated by natural light.
To unlock Olo, researchers scanned the retinas of volunteers to locate the M cones and then precisely targeted them with laser flashes, producing a colour that bypasses the brain’s typical colour processing.
