What if you could peer beyond the edge of the rainbow? Imagine a color so novel, so vivid, that it doesn’t exist anywhere in nature or on any screen—a color that only a handful of people in the world have ever experienced, thanks to cutting-edge science and a bit of retinal trickery. This isn’t science fiction; it’s the story of how scientists have recently discovered and identified a new color, “olo,” by literally hacking the way our eyes work. The journey to this breakthrough reveals not only the limits of human perception but also the extraordinary lengths researchers will go to expand our experience of the world.
Short answer: Scientists discover or identify a new color—like the recently revealed “olo”—by using advanced technology to bypass the natural limitations of human vision. In the case of olo, they used a precise laser system to individually stimulate only one type of cone cell in the retina, creating a color sensation that cannot be replicated by any natural light or digital display. This process involves both mapping the retina at the cellular level and developing specialized equipment to target specific photoreceptors, allowing the perception of a color that had never before entered human consciousness.
How Human Vision Sets the Stage
To appreciate how a new color can be discovered, it helps to understand how we see color in the first place. As outlined by both Scientific American and news.berkeley.edu, human eyes typically perceive color using three types of photoreceptor cells on the retina, known as cones. S cones respond to short wavelengths (blues), M cones to medium wavelengths (greens), and L cones to long wavelengths (reds). Our brains combine signals from these cones to produce the full spectrum of colors we experience—estimated to be up to 10 million variants for the average person, according to Scientific American.
However, the ranges of these cones overlap significantly. Notably, about 85% of the light that activates the M (green) cones also stimulates the L (red) cones, as described by Berkeley News. This overlap means that, in the natural world, no light can selectively activate only the M cones without triggering the others. Thus, the colors we see are always some combination of these overlapping signals, setting a fundamental boundary on human color perception.
Cracking the Code: The Oz Technique
The breakthrough came when researchers at the University of California, Berkeley developed a novel technology called “Oz.” As described in depth by news.berkeley.edu, Oz is a platform that can “directly control up to 1,000 photoreceptors in the eye at once” using tiny, precisely targeted pulses of laser light. By first mapping the unique arrangement of S, M, and L cones in each participant’s retina, the scientists could then program the laser to selectively stimulate just the M cones—something nature itself cannot do.
This process is incredibly delicate. One participant described the experience as sitting in a dark room, biting down on a bar to keep their head perfectly still, while a carefully calibrated laser delivered light to a thumbnail-sized spot on the retina. When the M cones were activated in isolation, participants reported seeing a “profoundly saturated teal”—a color so vivid it surpassed anything previously experienced, and which the researchers dubbed “olo,” as reported by Scientific American.
Why “Olo” Is Truly New
What makes olo a genuinely new color isn’t just that it’s very vivid teal. It’s that the sensation it produces is unattainable by any combination of natural light, digital displays, or pigments. As Scientific American explains, “there’s no light in the world that can activate only the M cone cells.” So, when the laser stimulates only M cones, the brain receives a signal it’s never processed before—resulting in a color experience outside the normal spectrum of human perception.
To test whether olo was truly new, the researchers conducted color-matching experiments. Participants tried to match the sensation of olo by adjusting the saturation of a teal laser, desaturating it with white light. All participants found that only by removing saturation could they match olo with anything available in the real world, confirming that olo exists “beyond the normal human range of color vision,” as Scientific American puts it.
The Technical Challenge and Breakthrough
Creating the experience of olo required both technological and scientific ingenuity. The Oz system isn’t just a fancy projector—it’s more akin to a “microscope for looking at the retina,” as one researcher put it in Berkeley News. The platform needed to identify, map, and target individual cone cells—a feat never previously achieved on this scale. According to news.berkeley.edu, the software behind Oz translates images and colors into thousands of tiny laser pulses, each aimed at the precise location of a specific cone cell.
The process involved years of development, starting as an undergraduate engineering project and culminating in a device that could create a “movie screen the size of a fingernail” on the retina. The system is so precise that it’s already being used by ophthalmologists to study eye diseases and vision loss, opening up new possibilities for both research and medical applications.
Who Has Seen “Olo”?
According to both Scientific American and multiple reports on YouTube, only five people have seen olo so far—three of whom were the scientists themselves, and two others who were colleagues unaware of the study’s purpose. The experience is not something that can be shared by showing a picture or mixing paints. As described in the YouTube video “Olo is a new color that only five people have seen,” the only way to perceive olo is through direct stimulation of the retina using the Oz laser system—a process that is currently experimental and not intended for casual or widespread use.
Implications: Pushing the Boundaries of Perception
The discovery of olo does more than just add a new color to the human palette; it fundamentally challenges our understanding of perception itself. As noted by a researcher quoted in Scientific American, this is “a truly groundbreaking advance in the ability to understand the photoreceptor mechanisms underlying color vision.” It shows that our experience of color isn’t limited by the outside world, but by how our eyes and brains process light. By directly manipulating the inputs to our visual system, scientists have demonstrated that it’s possible to create entirely new perceptual experiences—ones that were previously thought impossible.
The potential applications go beyond curiosity. The Oz technique could help answer longstanding questions about color blindness, vision loss, and the basic workings of the retina. As Berkeley News reports, researchers are already using the technology to study eye disease and to explore how vision could be restored or enhanced. There’s even speculation, as mentioned in Scientific American, that future screens might be able to stimulate individual cones, creating crisper, more vibrant images—possibly even allowing more people to experience “impossible colors.”
Limits and Open Questions
While the discovery is remarkable, it comes with caveats. The experience of olo is transient and requires specialized equipment in a controlled environment. As one researcher pointed out in Scientific American, “This is not a consumer-oriented device, right? This was a basic visual science and neuroscience project.” The process is uncomfortable, involving immobilization and direct retinal stimulation, and is not something that can be commercialized or widely replicated with today’s technology.
Moreover, there are still many open questions. How might the brain adapt to repeated exposure to new colors like olo? Could this technique be used to give color-blind individuals access to a wider range of colors, or is it limited to fleeting experimental glimpses? And what other perceptual frontiers might be unlocked by similar approaches?
A New Frontier in Color Science
In summary, scientists discover or identify a new color by going beyond the natural limitations of human vision, using sophisticated technology to stimulate the eye in ways that the natural world cannot. The discovery of “olo” involved mapping individual cone cells in the retina, then using a laser to selectively activate only the M cones—creating a sensation of color that exists “beyond the normal human range,” as confirmed by both color-matching experiments and the subjective reports of participants (as detailed by sources like Scientific American, news.berkeley.edu, and several YouTube reports).
This achievement marks a leap forward in our understanding of both the mechanics and the limits of human vision. By demonstrating that the range of perceivable color is not fixed, but can be expanded with the right tools, scientists have opened the door to new possibilities in neuroscience, vision science, and even future technology. For now, only a handful of people have seen olo, but their experience hints at how much more there may be to discover—if we’re willing to look beyond the boundaries of the visible spectrum.
As one participant described, “It was like a profoundly saturated teal … the most saturated natural color was just pale by comparison” (news.berkeley.edu). In this dazzling new world of color, the only limit is how far science and imagination can take us.