Scientists Discover 'Olo' — A 'New Colour' They Claim No Human Has Ever Seen Before
Scientists in the US have discovered "incredibly saturated" blue-green colour, which they have called "olo". They have claimed no one has ever seen it before.
Scientists have claimed to discover a new colour that has not been seen by humans before. The new colour is being called "olo" by the researchers, according to the findings published in Science Advances on Friday (April 18).
The findings of the research, which follows an experiment involving researchers getting laser pulses fired into their eyes, have been described by the study's co-author, Prof Ren Ng from the University of California in US, as "remarkable".
The laser pulses stimulated specific cells in the retina, pushing their perception beyond its natural limits, following which the participants saw an "incredibly saturated" blue-green colour, which they have called "olo". However, some experts say that the existence of this new colour is "open to argument".
"We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented colour signal but we didn’t know what the brain would do with it," The Guardian quoted Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley as saying. "It was jaw-dropping. It’s incredibly saturated."
'More Saturated Than Any Colour'
Prof Ng and his four other colleagues, who participated in the experiment, told BBC that olo was "more saturated than any colour that you can see in the real world". He also said that the reasearch findings could help them in carrying out further research into colour blindness.
"Let's say you go around your whole life and you see only pink, baby pink, a pastel pink. And then one day you go to the office and someone's wearing a shirt, and it's the most intense baby pink you've ever seen, and they say it's a new colour and we call it red," he told BBC.
The researchers also shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the colour they witnessedm but they stressed that it was merely an example and that the actual hue could only be witnessed after retina manipulation by a laser, a report by The Guardian said.
"There is no way to convey that colour 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 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."
How The Experiment Was Conducted
According to a BBC report, the researchers showed a laser beam into the pupil of one eye of each of the five participants in th study. There were four male and one female, including Prof Ng and two other co-authors of the research paper. All five of them had normal colour vision.
The participants then looked into a device consisting of lasers, mirrors, and optical devices called Oz. The equipment was designed by a team of scientists from UC Berkeley and the University of Washington.
Humans perceive colours when light falls on colour-sensitive cells called cones in the retina, which is a light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye. There are three types of cone cells in the eye that are sensitive to long (L), medium (M) and short (S) wavelengths of light for blue, red, and green respectively.
The research paper noted that in normal vision, "any light that stimulates an M cone cell must also stimulate its neighbouring L and/or S cones", because its function overlaps with them.
However, the study said that the laser only stimulated only M cone cells, "which in principle would send a colour signal to the brain that never occurs in natural vision."
This means that a person cannot see the colour olo in the real world with just his naked eye, and would need the help of specific stimulation. Each participant adjusted a controllable colour dial until it matched olo, in order to verify the colour.
The study's co-author Prof Ng has admitted that olo is "certainly very technically difficult" to see, but the team is analysing the research findings to figure out what it could potentially mean for people who are colour blind.
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