Imagine seeing a colour that no one has ever seen before — not in nature, not on a screen, not even in your dreams. That’s exactly what a group of scientists from the University of California and the University of Washington believe they’ve uncovered in a groundbreaking experiment involving lasers and the human eye.
The colour, dubbed “olo,” reportedly appeared to participants after laser pulses were carefully directed into their eyes, targeting only the M-cone cells in the retina — those responsible for detecting green light. Under normal circumstances, these cones are always activated along with other cone types (L for red, S for blue), making isolated stimulation impossible in everyday vision. But in this controlled lab setup, participants saw something entirely unique — a colour more vivid and saturated than anything they’d seen before.
Prof. Ren Ng, one of the researchers and participants, described it as “remarkable” — like seeing a hyper-intense version of a familiar shade, yet entirely new. The team believes the findings could lead to advances in understanding colour blindness and visual perception.
Not everyone is convinced, though. Some vision scientists argue that what was seen might not truly be a “new” colour, but rather a novel perception due to the unusual way cone cells were stimulated.
Regardless, the idea of “olo” invites us to think deeper about the limits of human perception. How much of the world are we truly able to see — and what lies just beyond the reach of our eyes?