Scientists have discovered a new colour, 'Olo,' visible only through laser technology; here's what it means
In a stunning breakthrough, scientists have discovered a new colour named Olo. There's just one catch: it's entirely invisible to the human eye. Defined as a deeply saturated teal, this enigmatic new colour has been perceived by just a few people with the help of specialized
laser technology
. The groundbreaking research, led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington School of Medicine, was released in Science Advances on April 18, 2025.
How scientists used Oz technology to reveal a new colour
The process of finding Olo is something straight out of a science fiction book. Scientists created a method called Oz — named after The Wizard of Oz — to "fool" the human eye into seeing a colour that would otherwise be invisible to the eye. With minute laser light micro-pulses of precise energy, the researchers specifically addressed individual photoreceptors in the retina without activating adjacent ones. Describing the problem, Ren Ng, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, stated, "There's no wavelength in the world that can stimulate only the M cone." Addressing this issue, the researchers created a means of stimulating only a single kind of cone cell selectively.
Austin Roorda, one of the professors working on the project, likened the
Oz technique
to a microscope for the retina. It enabled them to shoot laser beams directly at individual cone cells with great precision, producing a colour — Olo — which no human had ever seen naturally before.
What does the new colour Olo actually look like
Since Olo cannot be achieved through any regular screen or medium, you would perhaps ask yourself: what does it look like? From the very few individuals — only five, including some of the scientists involved — who have viewed it through the Oz system, Olo looks more like an over-charged teal. Austin Roorda said it was "a profoundly saturated teal," adding that even the richest natural colourings seem pale in comparison with Olo.
In spite of this explanation, no photo, digital image, or colour chip can recreate Olo. It is exclusively contained in the immediate stimulation of the human retina, rendering it one of the most unusual visual experiences in the world — at least until now.
Is Olo really a new colour
The question, of course, arises: is Olo a new colour, or just a new experience of colour? Technically, Olo is not a new wavelength of light produced by nature. Rather, it is a latent colour, always there in theory, but not visible because of the constraints of human vision. Francis Windram, an Imperial College London research associate, added that, sociolinguistically speaking, naming and acknowledging a hitherto unseen colour such as Olo could actually make it seem like an actual "new" colour to mankind. Thus, although Olo has been quietly present in the universe all along, it was technological innovation that finally brought it to light.
Potential future uses of Olo technology in vision correction
Apart from its wow factor, the finding of Olo and the creation of the Oz laser technology have broader implications for medicine — especially in curing colour blindness. Scientists think that in the future, technology based on the Oz technique may assist individuals with certain types of colour blindness like deuteranomaly, which causes green colour vision impairment. Francis Windram described how if lasers could precisely stimulate particular cone cells, it might in theory restore better colour vision.
But the technical hurdles are high. Striking the right cones reliably in a moving, living eye is very hard. As Windram noted, although the concept is intriguing, it could be a long time before such a device is practical for routine vision correction.
Understanding colour perception through the lens of Olo
The discovery of Olo also sheds light on the broader mystery of how
colour perception
varies across species. Humans possess three types of cone cells, allowing us to perceive a range of colours based on red, green, and blue light. By comparison, animals such as mantis shrimp have as many as 12 different kinds of colour receptors. These allow them to see a blinding range of colours, even ultraviolet. At the same time, dogs have only two cones and primarily perceive colour in shades of yellow and blue.
As Windram pointed out, colour vision relies on three factors: the physical nature of light, the neurological processing of the brain, and the social aspects — how we classify and label colours. Infamous phenomena such as the viral controversy over the dress in 2015 demonstrate just how subjective our experience of colour can be.
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