Scientists Discover New Colorsand Debunk the Myth of Purple

Every few months, the internet re-discovers a hot take that sounds like it was invented to start a group chat argument:
“Purple isn’t real.” It’s usually delivered with the confidence of someone who once made a volcano for a science fair and
has been riding that high ever since.

Here’s the twist: the “purple isn’t real” line is both kind of true and also wildly misleading. And the reason
it’s misleading is the same reason scientists can now claim to have revealed a “new” color that most humans have never seen:
color isn’t just physics. Color is physics plus biology plus your brain doing interpretive dance with electrical signals.

In 2025, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley used a laser-based system nicknamed “Oz” to stimulate specific
cone cells in the retina with extreme precision, allowing a handful of participants to perceive a hyper-saturated blue-green hue
they named “olo.” The color is described as more saturated than anything you can normally see in the worldand it
sits outside the typical color gamut our eyes can produce under everyday lighting.

So, did scientists truly find a brand-new color? And does that mean purple is fake? Let’s unpack what’s real, what’s “real,” and what
your brain is absolutely insisting on making complicated (because that’s its love language).

What “Color” Actually Is (Spoiler: Not Paint, Not Pixels, Not Vibes)

In physics terms, visible light is electromagnetic radiation in a certain range of wavelengthsroughly about 400 nanometers at the
violet end to around 700 nanometers at the red end. A single wavelength can produce a “spectral” color sensation like red, green, or violet.
But that’s only the starting point.

The moment light hits your eye, it stops being a simple wavelength story and becomes a biology story. Your retina contains photoreceptors:
rods (great in dim light, terrible at color gossip) and cones (the main characters of daytime color vision). Humans typically have three kinds of
conesoften called S (short), M (medium), and L (long)which respond to overlapping ranges of wavelengths. No single cone “knows” the color by itself;
it mainly signals how many photons it captured. Color emerges when the visual system compares the relative activity across cone types.

Translation: your eye does not read a color label off a photon like it’s scanning a barcode. It gathers signals, and your brain constructs the experience
we call “color.” That’s why color perception can shift with lighting, background, and contextand why two very different mixes of light can look like the
same color (a phenomenon that makes lighting designers feel powerful and normal people feel betrayed).

The Oz System and “Olo”: How Scientists “Discovered” a New Color

The problem: our cones overlap, and nature won’t let one cone type go solo

Here’s the key limitation of ordinary color vision: the sensitivity ranges of the M and L cones overlap heavily. In normal viewing, when you stimulate M cones
with a certain wavelength, you almost always stimulate L cones too. That overlap is part of why human color vision is so flexibleand also why it has boundaries.

The Berkeley team wanted to explore what would happen if they could stimulate a large set of M cones while avoiding the usual “tag-along” activation of other cones.
Under everyday physics, there isn’t a simple wavelength of light that activates only M cones. So the researchers used engineering, not nature, to cheat.

The method: microdosing the retina with laser precision

The Oz platform uses tiny doses of laser light and sophisticated optics to target individual photoreceptorsup to around a thousand at a timewithin a small patch
of the retina. By mapping cone cells and then precisely delivering light, the system can bias stimulation toward a chosen cone type and create visual experiences
that standard displays can’t reproduce.

When participants viewed a stimulus that primarily activated M cones in a controlled pattern, they reported seeing a striking, intensely saturated blue-green hue.
The researchers named this hue “olo.” It’s often described in plain language as an ultra-saturated teal or peacock greenexcept the participants insist that ordinary
teal is basically a pale imitation.

So is it really a “new color”?

This is where science gets both exciting and annoyingly precise (which is why it works). “Olo” is new in the sense that it’s a color experience produced by a
stimulation pattern that normal viewing conditions do not deliver. It appears to push beyond the typical range (or gamut) of colors accessible to human vision in daily life.

But some experts argue that calling it a “new color” can oversimplify what’s happening. The better claim is: Oz creates a novel percept by driving the retina in an
unusual way. It expands what the visual system can be made to report under special conditions. That’s still a big dealespecially for vision sciencebut it’s not the same as
discovering a new wavelength hiding behind the couch.

Why you can’t just “download olo” (and why your phone is innocent)

If you’re wondering why we can’t just add “Olo Mode” to phone screens, here’s the issue: your screen controls light at the pixel level, not at the photoreceptor level.
Oz effectively treats your retina as the display surface. That requires retinal tracking, individualized mapping, and lab-grade optics. Also, the display area is tiny
described roughly as about the size of a fingernail at arm’s length. So yes, it’s incredible, and no, it won’t be a TikTok filter next week.

What This “New Color” Teaches Us About the Myth of Purple

Now let’s return to our favorite chaotic claim: “Purple isn’t real.”

The myth usually mixes up three different ideas:

• Spectral vs. nonspectral colors (physics classification)
• Light wavelength vs. color perception (biology and neuroscience)
• Violet vs. purple vs. magenta (language and labeling)

Once you separate those, the “myth” collapses in a very satisfying waylike a bad argument in a good debate club.

Spectral colors are single-wavelength-ish. Purple usually isn’t.

Spectral colors are associated with light that can be described mainly by a single dominant wavelength in the visible spectrumthink red, green, or violet.
But many colors we use every day are nonspectral: they don’t correspond to a single wavelength. They’re created by combinations of wavelengths that
activate your cones in a particular ratio.

Purple (and its close cousin magenta) is commonly described as nonspectral because it tends to come from mixing shorter (bluish/violet) and longer (reddish) wavelengths.
There’s no single “purple wavelength” that sits neatly between blue and red on the spectrum line. That’s the kernel of truth behind the meme.

But “not a single wavelength” does NOT mean “not real”

If “real” means “can be experienced reliably by humans,” purple is real. You can see it on screens, in pigments, in sunsets, in flowers, and in that one hoodie your friend
swears is blue even though it is obviously purple and this is why friendships are tested.

Purple objects exist physically as surfaces with reflectance properties that send a particular mix of wavelengths into your eyes. Your cones respond, your brain interprets,
and the sensation is purple. That is exactly how color works for every hueincluding spectral ones. Even Isaac Newton pointed out that rays aren’t “colored” in themselves;
color is the sensation produced in the observer. So if someone says purple “doesn’t exist,” the right response is: “Define exist. Also, please stop yelling at the eggplant.”

Why Your Brain “Invents” Purple (And Why That’s Normal, Not Fake)

To understand purple, picture the visible spectrum as a line: violet on one end, red on the other. Now imagine your brain hates that line and would rather have a circle,
because circles are tidy and brains love tidy. When both short-wave signals (blue/violet) and long-wave signals (red) are strong at the same time, the visual system can’t place
that sensation in a single spot on the straight-line spectrum. So it “wraps” the ends together conceptually and creates a bridge region: purples.

This is closely related to opponent processing, a widely used framework for how the visual system encodes color differences. Instead of carrying millions of separate “color labels,”
the system transmits contrasts through channels that behave like opponents (for example, red vs. green and blue vs. yellow), plus a lightness channel. That opponent setup helps explain
why some combinations feel natural (blue-green, red-yellow) while others don’t (a stable “reddish-green” is famously elusive under ordinary viewing).

Purple doesn’t “break” the systemit showcases it. It’s what happens when you feed the system strong signals from opposite ends and the brain chooses a coherent interpretation rather
than throwing an error message like a computer. (If only group projects worked that way.)

Violet vs. Purple: The Mix-Up That Keeps the Myth Alive

A lot of online confusion comes from people using “violet” and “purple” as if they’re the same thing. In everyday language, the words overlap.
In physics and vision science conversations, the distinction matters:

• Violet can be spectral (near the short-wavelength end of visible light).
• Purple is commonly nonspectral, often arising from combining short and long wavelengths.

In other words, your rainbow might end in violet, while your favorite “purple” marker is usually built from a mixture that your brain interprets as purple.
Different pipeline, same valid experience. And yes, it’s still okay to call both “purple” in casual life. The color police are not funded this year.

So… Did Scientists Debunk Purple or Prove It?

If anything, the Oz/olo work supports the best counterpoint to the meme: color is not a list of wavelengths; it’s a space of experiences constrained by biology.
Change the constraints and the experience can change too.

Purple isn’t “fake.” It’s a vivid example of how your brain creates stable meaning from messy input. That’s not a bugit’s a survival feature. If our ancestors had to stop and argue
about whether purple exists every time they saw berries, we would not be here.

Why This Research Matters Beyond “Cool New Color” Headlines

1) It gives vision scientists a new kind of control panel

Oz is exciting because it moves beyond simply shining light into the eye and hoping the biology cooperates. It’s closer to “programming” the first layer of the visual system with
cell-level precision. That can help researchers test long-standing questions about how perception is built from cone signals.

2) It may help study color vision deficiencies and retinal disease

The same ability to map and stimulate cones could support research into color blindness, cone loss, and retinal disorders. Even if Oz isn’t a direct “treatment,” it may become a powerful
experimental tool for understanding what’s missing and what can be simulated.

3) It reframes “impossible colors” as engineering problems

For years, popular science has flirted with the idea of “forbidden” or “impossible” colorshues that standard opponent channels supposedly prevent us from seeing simultaneously.
Oz doesn’t magically rewrite the visual system, but it shows how unusual stimulation and careful control can push perception into corners we don’t visit in daily life.

Practical Takeaways (Yes, You Can Use This at Home)

• If someone says purple isn’t real, ask what they mean. If they mean “no single wavelength,” sure. If they mean “you can’t see it,” they’re wrong.
• Lighting changes everything. A “purple” object can swing toward red or blue depending on the spectrum of the light source. Your eyes are doing math; your lamp is setting the equation.
• Color is an experience, not a property. Objects reflect light; your nervous system turns that into color. That’s why two different spectra can look identical.
• “New colors” are likely to be new ways of stimulating us, not new physics. The universe didn’t add a secret wavelength. We learned a new trick for the retina.

Experiences: Living in a World Where Purple Is “Made Up” (and That’s the Point)

If you want to feel the “purple paradox” in real life, you don’t need a laser lab. You need a few ordinary moments where your eyes and brain quietly show off.
Start with a sunset. You’ll often see purplish clouds that seem to hover between warm reds and cool blues. Nothing in that sky is labeled “purple” by physics.
What’s happening is a shifting recipe of wavelengthsscattered light, lingering reds, deepening blueslanding on your retina in just the right proportions. Your brain
takes those end-of-spectrum signals and says, “I know what this is,” then serves you a color that feels perfectly coherent.

Or take a concert, where LED stage lights flip between saturated red and saturated blue faster than you can blink. When the beams overlap on a haze-filled stage,
the air itself looks purple. You can almost watch the construction process: red-only looks hot, blue-only looks icy, and the overlap looks like a new “third thing.”
That third thing isn’t a single wavelength floating around in the fog; it’s your visual system doing what it does bestcompressing complicated input into a clean sensation.

Printing is another hands-on way to appreciate “nonspectral” colors. Magenta ink (a close neighbor of many purples) is literally a workhorse of modern color printing.
It exists as a pigment that absorbs some wavelengths and reflects others, shaping the light that reaches your eyes. When you see a purple magazine cover,
the “purple” isn’t trapped inside the paper like a tiny royal prisoner. It’s the reflectance profile of dyes and paper interacting with your room’s lightingand your
brain interpreting the resulting cone signals as purple.

Digital displays give you an even cleaner demo. Look closely at a purple pixel cluster on a phone screen and you’ll usually find it’s made of red and blue subpixels
working together (with brightness doing the final seasoning). You can’t point to a single “purple” LED in most displays. Purple is the agreement your brain reaches
when it sees red and blue energy in the same spot at the same time.

Now imagine the “olo” experience as the extreme version of this everyday truth: what changes is not the universe, but the recipe your retina receives. People who saw olo
describe it as a hyper-saturated blue-green that normal screens can’t capture. If you’ve ever tried to photograph a neon sign and felt personally insulted by the result,
you already understand the concept. Some experiences don’t compress well into standard output devices because the device can’t reproduce the same stimulation pattern.
Oz works because it doesn’t try to paint the world on a screenit aims the “paintbrush” at your photoreceptors.

The funniest part is that once you accept that purple is “made up,” you realize that’s not an insultit’s a description of how perception works. Purple is real in the way
music is real: it’s a structured experience created in a nervous system from physical inputs. And if scientists can coax the eye into seeing olo by stimulating cones in a
new pattern, it’s a reminder that the “color list” in your head is not a fixed catalog. It’s a living interfaceone that can surprise you, even in a world you thought you’d already seen in full color.

Conclusion

The discovery of “olo” isn’t a cosmic announcement that physics added a new crayon to reality. It’s something more interesting: a demonstration that color is an experience built by
neural machineryand that if you stimulate that machinery in new ways, you may discover regions of perception you never visit in everyday life.

And purple? Purple isn’t a myth. The myth is the idea that “not a single wavelength” equals “not real.” Purple is real as perception, real as culture, real as pigment, real as design,
and real as the brain’s elegant solution to a spectrum that refuses to be a circleuntil your mind makes it one.