Olo is a newly discovered color in the lab, never seen by humans before.
Imagine seeing a color so wild, so off-the-charts different, that it doesn’t exist anywhere on Earth—or in your brain’s visual Rolodex. So far, only 8 people in the world have witnessed it.
That’s exactly what happened when scientists at UC Berkeley hijacked the human eye and unveiled a new color, charmingly named olo. And no, it’s not some trendy paint swatch—it’s a genuine, never-before-seen hue.
Think bright turquoise, but way, way more vivid than you can even imagine.
This is the closest approximation of the hue that was discovered. But Olo was found to be many times more saturated and intense.
So… What Even Is Olo?
Olo isn’t found in rainbows, sunsets, or peacocks. It was born in a lab, using an advanced piece of tech called “Oz” that lets researchers surgically stimulate individual color-detecting cells in the retina. Specifically, they zapped the M-cones—the ones tuned to green light—while leaving the L- (red) and S- (blue) cones out of the party.
Participants had to stare into the optical device as a laser beam was flashed into one of their pupils. Image by Austin Roorda.
Computation of perceptual uncertainty ellipses. Via Journal of Science Advances.
“Let’s say you go around your whole life and you see only pink, baby pink, a pastel pink,” he adds. “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 color and we call it red.”
-Prof Ren Ng from the University of California
The result? A shockingly vivid blue-green that no human had laid eyes on before. Think electric teal dialed up to an 11—then warped into a totally new dimension.
It was so intense, study participants struggled to describe it using any known color language. It was just… olo.
“It was definitely unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said vision scientist Katherine Mancuso, one of the researchers who experienced it.
-Source: Live Science
Photo by Nastia Petruk on Unsplash
Who’s Seen It?
So far, only eight people on the planet have seen olo. That includes five participants and three lucky researchers. To even get there, each person had to undergo a custom retinal mapping with fancy imaging tech (adaptive optics optical coherence tomography, if you want to impress at dinner parties).
“It’s a really strong, saturated bluish-green color,” said UC Berkeley’s Dr. Brian Schmidt.
-Via LiveScience
And the name? “Olo” comes from the color coordinate “0, 1, 0” on a three-axis color model—aka full blast on the green (M) cone, zero input on the red (L) and blue (S) cones. A mouthful, but “olo” sounds way cooler.
But Is It Really New?
Cue the skeptics. Some vision experts—like Prof. John Barbur from the University of London—argue olo might just be an extremely amped-up version of colors we already know.
Still, the method behind the madness is revolutionary. Most colors are “blended” based on how our cones fire off signals together. But olo was created by laser-precision zapping of just one cone type—something nature can’t pull off.
Why Should You Care?
Besides the sheer cool factor of new colors existing, this breakthrough could lead to major advances in vision science. Think: new treatments for color blindness, better simulations of eye diseases, or even tech that lets us customize color perception.
“This is just the beginning,” said researcher Austin Roorda. “We’re opening a door into understanding color and perception in a whole new way.”
–Source: Science Advances
TL;DR?
Scientists just discovered a color the human eye has literally never seen before. It’s called olo, it’s a retina-bending bluish-green, and only eight people on Earth have experienced it. It’s real, it’s mind-bending, and it might be the beginning of a whole new way to see the world.
The post Meet Olo, The Brand New Color You’ve Never Seen appeared first on Moss and Fog.