Scientists claim to have found colour no one has seen before

[Introversion]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/18/scientists-claim-to-have-found-colour-no-one-has-seen-before

After walking the Earth for a few hundred thousand years, humans might think they have seen it all. But not according to a team of scientists who claim to have experienced a colour no one has seen before.

The bold – and contested – assertion follows an experiment in which researchers in the US had laser pulses fired into their eyes. By stimulating individual cells in the retina, the laser pushed their perception beyond its natural limits, they say.

Their description of the colour is not too arresting – the five people who have seen it call it blue-green – but that, they say, does not fully capture the richness of the experience.

“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,” said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. “It was jaw-dropping. It’s incredibly saturated.”

…

 

[RedRajah]

So...is it The Colour From Out of Space?

 

[Friendly Frog]

I was hoping for Octarine...

 

[Meg]

Oh ffs. They just stimulated the medium wavelength cones extra hard. "Incredibly saturated" is exactly what you would expect.

 

[MaeZe]

Contested discovery achieved by experiment firing laser pulses into eyes, stimulating retina cells

Good grief!

Didn't they find the perfect black a few years ago?

 

[Gatteau]

Ooh, I wanna see it! Or maybe I already can...

I have this weird thing about specifically blue LED lights where I just can't ever focus on them - just blues, the other colors are fine, makes words on signs hard - and no one else I've talked to seems to experience quite the same thing. The eye doctor said Hmm... My (very limited) research leads me to believe it's somehow related to things that cause colorblindness, but also that I may be some kind of cool mutant with extra color-seeing powers, which is way cooler.

Anyway, colors are fascinating! I've always enjoyed correcting people on precisely what shade of teal that car is over there, everyone loves it...

 

[DestKitAero]

//voided, that was a terrible joke ToT//

 

[lbender]

I know a lot of vets who use Class 3 or Class 4 therapeutic lasers. They're told not to allow the beams to go into anybody's eyes. I always thought it was because they could cause the eyeball to boil, thus destroying it. I didn't realize it was just to prevent anyone from seeing 'new' colors...