• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

A “New Color?” Scientists Claim “Olo” Is Like Nothing You’ve Ever Seen Before

April 18, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

Olo is described as a “new color” that scientists argue they’ve enabled people to see – one that doesn’t resemble anything in our everyday visual experience. It’s described as an intensely saturated greenish-blue, brought to life using a new technique that stimulates the eye’s photoreceptors in a non-conventional way.

“We name this new color ‘olo’,” the study authors write. 

But can this really be considered a “novel color” like the researchers boldly claim? The three components of color are hue, saturation (or chroma), and value (or brightness). The study suggests olo appears with a uniquely strong saturation, but its hue remains firmly in the grasp of blue-green. Anyway, we’ll leave that debate for the color scientists and the comment section for now. Regardless of the definition, those who’ve seen olo say it offers a visual experience that’s subtly unfamiliar.

“Subjects report that olo in our prototype system appears blue-green of unprecedented saturation, when viewed relative to a neutral gray background. Subjects find that they must desaturate olo by adding white light before they can achieve a color match with the closest monochromatic light, which lies on the boundary of the gamut, unequivocal proof that olo lies beyond the gamut,” they added. 

“Color names volunteered for olo include ‘teal,’ ‘green,’ ‘blue-greenish,’ and ‘green, a little blue.’ Subjects consistently rate olo’s saturation as 4 of 4, compared to an average rating of 2.9 for the near-monochromatic colors of matching hue,” it continues.

With red as an example, this diagram shows the three components of color: hue, saturation (or chroma), and value (or brightness).

With red as an example, this diagram shows the three components of color: hue, saturation (or chroma), and value (or brightness).

Image credit: Sandy Storm/Shutterstock.com

Color is a perception that we experience when certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation stimulate the cone cells in our retina, sending signals to the brain. Coating the back of our eyeball, we have three types of cone photoreceptors: short-wavelength (S), middle-wavelength (M), and long-wavelength (L), each with overlapping spectral sensitivities. 

Because of this overlap, any given light wavelength stimulates at least two types of cones simultaneously, which limits the range and saturation of colors that we can perceive.

In a new study, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a way to directly stimulate a single cone by blasting it with a focused laser light, called Oz. Using this system on five human subjects, the laser system was able to solely trigger M cone cell activity, leading people to report experiencing a color described as “blue-green of unprecedented saturation.” 

Furthermore, they were able to wield this technique to stimulate thousands of individual cones, allowing them to create images and visuals with the technique. 

Traditional color technologies – like the computer screen you’re currently looking at – rely on a method called spectral metamerism. This involves blending different wavelengths of light to mimic the way our eyes perceive specific colors, prompting the cone cells in our retinas and our brains into seeing a match. This strategy has been around since at least 1861, when James Clerk Maxwell wowed audiences at the Royal Institution by layering red, green, and blue images to create full-color visuals. 

The Oz method uses a different approach. Rather than adjusting the spectrum of light, it controls the spatial distribution of light on the retina, a concept known as spatial metamerism. This allows for the creation of a broad range of colors using a single monochromatic light, sidestepping the need for the three light primaries. 

Commenting on the new study, experts acknowledge that while the research introduces some promising practical innovations, some aspects of single-cone stimulation are not entirely new.

“When only M cone is stimulated, observers report that they see an unusually saturated greenish blue.  Normally, focussed on retina point source, such as a star, excites several cones due optical constraints. To overcome this, adaptive optics is used, a method that astronomists use to look at stars. Single cone stimulation was known earlier. The novelty of this paper is that they use this method to stimulate many individual cones and produce an image,” Dr Misha Corobyew, Senior Lecturer in Optometry and Vision Science at The University of Auckland – who wasn’t involved in the new study – said in a statement.

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Unexplained And Deadly Heat Wave Hotspots Are Showing Up Across The Planet

Source Link: A "New Color?" Scientists Claim "Olo" Is Like Nothing You've Ever Seen Before

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • What Are The Amazon’s “Flying Rivers”? And Why Every Single One Of Us Relies On Them
  • Curious New Microbe With Tiny Genome Toes The Line Between Cell And Virus
  • We’ve Just Found Out Where The World’s Longest-Living Vertebrate Has Its Babies
  • For The First Time, An Animal Has Been Shown Responding To Plant-Produced Sounds
  • Deep Ocean Currents Have “Weather” And Seasonal Changes That We’re Only Just Learning About
  • Stratus: What Are The Symptoms Of The Latest COVID-19 Subvariant To Spread Around The World?
  • In 1927, Henry Ford Tried To Build A Town In The Amazon And Things Went Very, Very Badly
  • Human Botfly: Say Hello To The Parasite That Would Love To Get Under Your Skin
  • Is The Weather Making Your Headache Worse?
  • “Zoning Out” Actually Helps You Learn? Data From Up To 90,000 Brain Cells Says So
  • Over Past 250,000 Years, Three Major Waves Of Human-Neanderthal Interbreeding Have Been Identified
  • Zebrafish “Catch” Yawns Just Like Us – We Might Need To Rethink Evolution To Account For That
  • 80,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Footprints Reveal How Children Hunted On Beaches
  • 5 Animals That Have Absolutely No Business Jumping (In Our Very Humble, Definitely Unbiased Opinion)
  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Why Do Many Large Language Models Give The Same Answer To This “Random” Number Query?
  • Adidas Jabulani: The World Cup Football So Bad NASA Decided To Study It
  • Beluga Whales Shake Their Blob-Like Melons To Say Hello And Even Woo A Mate, But How?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version