A team of scientists claims that technology has created a new color that people can’t see.
The researchers from the United States used a device named after the Wizard of Oz to inject laser pulses into their eyes to “experience” the color, which they called “olo.”
Olo is difficult to see with the unaided eye, but five witnesses who have seen it claim that it resembles teal.
What findings was made by the study?
On April 18, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, School of Medicine, published an article in the journal Science Advances that described their discovery of a hue that is unrelated to human vision.
They explained that they had created Oz, a trick that can “trick” the human eye into seeing olo. The method is named in honor of the Wizard of Oz.
Frank Baum wrote about a man in Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, who deceives the populace of the fictional land of Oz into believing he was a wizard. For instance, it is thought that visitors to Oz’s capital, the Emerald City, must wear special glasses to protect their eyes because it is so vibrant and vibrant. One of the wizard’s tricks is using glasses, which give the city a more lush and lush appearance.
How are colors perceived by people?
The retina’s three different photoreceptor types are used to perceive color. M cones detect medium, green, and L cones detect longer, red wavelengths, while S cones detect shorter, blue wavelengths.
Francis Windram, a research associate in the department of life sciences at Imperial College London, explained to Al Jazeera that “the signals from these cones are then sent through a complex series of cells in the retina that clean up and integrate the signal before passing it down the optic nerve through parts of the brain.
The visual cortex is where visual information is passed from one area of the brain to another.
How was the “new” color discovered by scientists?
M cones serve a dual purpose in normal vision, with S and L cones and S and L cones serving as neighbors, so any light that strikes M cones activates the other two cones as well. The M cones cannot be used alone.
In an article published on the university’s website, Ren Ng, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, explained that “there is no wavelength in the world that can stimulate only the M cone.”
“I started to wonder what the results would be if all M cone cells were stimulated.” Would it be “the greenest green you’ve ever seen”?
Ng and Austin Roorda, both of whom are professors of optometry and vision science at UC Berkeley, collaborated on the technology.
The eye uses tiny microdoses of laser light to target individual photoreceptors, which Roorda called “a microscope for looking at the retina.” Eye disease research is already being conducted using the equipment, which needs to be extremely stable when in use.
James Carl Fong, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley who studies electrical engineering and computer science, started using Oz in 2018. The experiments that were conducted by Hannah Doyle, a second doctoral student at Berkeley, showed how human subjects could perceive the new color, olo.
Is the color olo really new?
Olo has always existed, but it has since gone beyond the range of hues that are visible to the average person. We cannot see any other shades of this nature. Therefore, from a physical or scientific perspective, olo is not a new color.
However, “from a sociolinguistic perspective, maybe it’s if people give new names to colors that were previously indistinguishable thanks to this technology! ” Windram said, “It all depends on how you say it.”
How many people have seen Olo?
Four men and one woman have seen the “new” color, totaling five. Everyone had a typical color vision.
Roorda and Ng, three of the subjects, are co-authors of the study, while the other two are researchers at the University of Washington employees who were unaware of the study’s purpose before they participated.
How does Olo appear?
Olo is described as being a teal or green-blue color, but it has never been seen before, according to those who have seen it.
It is described as a “blue-green color of unparalleled saturation” in the article by UC Berkeley.
The most saturated natural color was just pale in comparison, according to Roorda, who described it as “like a profoundly saturated teal.”
“Olo is a very striking olo, even though I wasn’t the subject of this paper. You are aware that the subject is “very blue-green,” Doyle said.
The researchers found that a photo of a teal square is the most similar color to olo. This square is not an olo-colored square, though. Simply put, the shade is invisible to the unaided eye.
“No time soon will we see Olo on any TVs or smartphones,” the statement states. According to a report in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Ng said, “And this goes a very, very far beyond VR headset technology.”
What if some colors are physically indistinguishable from one another because they are uncommon?
Olo, a hue that cannot be rendered but only experienced, was discovered by UC Berkeley researchers.
Olo might never or might not be a part of the Pantone Color System. https: //t. co/sBRGVhw85g pic. twitter.com/rxmbutd7y2
Could colorblindness be a benefit of this technology?
Researchers at Berkeley are examining whether colorblindness sufferers can benefit from Oz technology.
According to Windram, success would depend on a person’s colorblindness. The most prevalent type of color blindness is deuteranomaly, which results in lessened green light sensitivity.
According to Windram, “in this situation, a miniaturized version of this technology could theoretically be employed to correct this by directly stimulating the cones when the appropriate color of light hits them.”
Windram pointed out that images of the Oz experiment on a table with great stability are displayed in research publicity materials.
“This would require a lot of work to minimize the technology, which is likely to take a long time. This may not technically be a form of vision correction because the laser must stably hit the appropriate cones in order to stimulate them, he said.
How can we determine how people “see” color?
According to Windram, the physical and neurological components of the color have three main components: the biological processing of these light signals by humans, the societal or linguistic component, and the linguistic component, which affect how colors are named.
“In the end, I may see a color and pronounce it red,” while another may describe it as rot or rouge, or as rot, or as rot, or as rot, or as crimson, or as claret or crimson.
In order to evaluate this, neuroscience and artificial intelligence researcher Patrick Mineault created a website for entertainment in September 2024 that users can use to test their color perceptions against those of others.
Due to variations in “temperature” of light, humans also have a different perception of color. A photo of a dress went viral in 2015, causing debate between users regarding whether it was white, gold, or blue, and black.
According to Windram, those making the decision about the color of the dress were refining preconceived notions about whether the dress was photographed in warm or cool lighting.
Do people and animals have different color visions?
Yes, colors can change depending on the species.
For instance, humans only perceive three wavelengths of red, blue, and green light while the tiny crustacean mantis shrimp can see 12 channels of color instead of just three. The mantis shrimp can detect ultraviolet and polarized light, which humans cannot see, according to an article from the Australian Academy of Science.
However, the eyes of a mantis shrimp cannot combine color receptors, unlike the human eye can mix two colors and distinguish between them, such as purple when red and blue are combined.
Source: Aljazeera
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