22 ms·
New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes
- modzu 1y agoits turquoise
- olelele 1y agoThis reminded me of the works of James Turell. I saw an installation where you observe the sky at dusk or dawn through a circular hole in the ceiling. The ceiling itself was illuminated with saturating colors and there were auras happening around the hole.
- nurettin 1y agoHow is a negative afterimage "a new color"? I didn't get it. A fatigued cone will show you less, not more.
- kadoban 1y agoI am curious how these work for people with common kinds of colorblindness. The author mentions at the end that they likely don't work for that case, but they don't seem to have spent much time thinking about it. Would it be possible to generate ones that _would_ work for specific kinds of colorblindness? Or is the entire concept doomed due to the specific way(s) that colorblind eyes are messed up?
- kookamamie 1y agoThe animation worked for me, I'm red-green colorblind.
- qayxc 1y agoThe red inside, reddish-orange outside was a little strange - I'm not colour blind, but have a really hard time distinguishing shades. As soon as I focused on the white dot, the red circle started to blend with the background and disappeared completely (was just one single colour for me). Only when it started shrinking did I hallucinated a faint green aura around it until it was gone.
- dentemple 1y agoI have deuteranomaly, and the hallucination worked for me, and it did appear like a crazy saturated blue-green ring around the shrinking red circle. I suspect, however, that those of us with deuteranomaly probably see a different blue-green than normal-sighted folks due to the bent color cones. The real question is, what about the folks with Deuteranopia (no working green cones at all)? Deuteranomaly, though, is still probably the best place to start since that's the big one that affects (some say) up to 10% of all males. Every other form of colorblindness affects a much slimmer percentage of the population.
- tricolon 1y agoI have red-green weakness but only saw a lighter green around the circle as it became smaller.
- saagarjha 1y agoI saw this as well.
- tgv 1y agoDidn't work for me. I notice that the color around the circle changes, but it's just a palish blue-something, not a new color, certainly not intense. Too much overlap, I guess. Perhaps it works when changing the background to blue? I fail on the first page of the Ishihara (?) test. When using those colorblindness filters in photoshop/-like apps, the protanopia and deuteranopia filters do very little for me. No 'real' diagnosis. I can see red and green though, but the shape needs to be big, and the color should be quite saturated. Reading resistors is really hard.
- osamagirl69 1y agoIt is incredible to see a concept going from 'optical table of sensitive equipment fraught with numerous safety concerns' to 'here is a 1 kB svg animation, stare at it for 1 minute' in 3 months. Enjoy your forbidden color, you earned it!
- layer8 1y agoThe article however concludes: “So do the illusions actually take you outside the natural human color gamut? Unfortunately, I’m not sure. I can’t find much quantitative information about how much your cones are saturated when you stare at red circles. My best guess is no, or perhaps just a little.”
- zahlman 1y agoFTA: > The idea for that animation is not new. It’s ~~plagiarized~~ based on Skytopia’s Eclipse of Titan optical illusion (h/t Steve Alexander), which dates back to at least 2010.
- armchairhacker 1y agoThis is really cool. Tangentially, it's an example of an important life lesson, "work smarter not harder". To see the impossible color, you could build a super-expensive, super-complicated laser to directly stimulate the exact cells; or you could desensitize the other ones with an optical illusion that works on a personal device (effectively zero cost and minimal complexity since it uses existing technology). Not to say the laser is a waste, despite the above I'd argue it's very useful. It lets us test how effectively the above actually works, and has other applications.
- do_not_redeem 1y agoThis optical illusion isn't some brand new thing. It's been widely known since I was a child, and surely hundreds of years before that. The laser system results in a stronger perceptual effect than you get from the illusion alone. We didn't have the technology to build it until recently. I'm certain the people who built it knew about the illusion, and it's probably what inspired the experiment in the first place.
- fortyseven 1y agoThat is a notion that is far easier to make in hindsight.
- gcr 1y agoWhat is the animation supposed to be like? I see just a black bar on the left narrowing, but nothing else happens. The red circle and green background and white dot didn’t change. (iOS 26 beta, iPhone 15)
- satellite2 1y agoAfter the black bar finish narrowing the red circle gets smaller slowly
- gpderetta 1y agoAfter the black bar disappears, the circle start shrinking and on the boundary you can indeed an intense azure/green colour.for me quickly flickering the eyes left and right did temporarily increase the patches of intense colour.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- solardev 1y agoIt's not the animation itself that does anything magical, but the afterimage (I think that's what you would call it?) your eye produces after you stare at the dot for long enough. The black bar is just a countdown timer for the impatient. But try to maintain laser focus on the central dot, not letting your eyes move or blink if you can help it. Once the black bar depletes, the circle should start shrinking, and around its periphery (like an eclipse) should be some incredibly vivid, super saturated colors.
- gblargg 1y agoThe bar is counting down time to wear out the receptors in your eye (you need to be staring at the center the whole time). THEN the illusion begins.
- fabiospampinato 1y agoNow we need to know from the people that experienced the laser how different this hallucination feels compared to that. Very cool stuff!
- sampl3username 1y agoUsing psychedelics, specifically 2C-B and LSD, you can also see very saturated colors you don't normally see in daily life. I see very saturated magentas.
- louthy 1y agoI wonder how much of this is ‘seeing’ and how much is emergent in the brain due to the drug. I suspect the latter, but that’s just opinion.
- dr_dshiv 1y ago“how much of this is ‘seeing’ and how much is emergent in the brain” Yeah… it’s gonna be hard to distinguish those in the best of circumstances.
- sampl3username 1y agoSeeing is also an illusion by the brain, all colors are in your head.
- louthy 1y agoI realise that, I’m just speculating on when the effect emerges. Whether it’s because of changes in the cones (which are the tips of nuerons) or a later emergent property.
- GuB-42 1y agoMost likely an emergent property. Psychedelics affect serotonin pathways, I don't think that cone cells and the first layers of neurons behind them have serotonin receptors.
- NL807 1y ago"Seeing" starts pretty much at the retina level and along the optic nerve. Lots of signal processing and data compression going on there. I wouldn't be surprised if hallucinogens affect those areas as well.
- _Microft 1y agoOpen the experiment animation and refresh the page multiple times to refresh the countdown while looking at the white pixel (from the same point of view) to get an even more impressive effect.
- TheAceOfHearts 1y agoTo me it looked like the circle outline had a shimmering aura, it felt very magical. This was a incredibly delightful experience so I just want to say thanks for posting it. When the circle was around the halfway point of shrinking the color looked the most vivid for me, so be sure to wait the whole duration.
- bozhark 1y agoSimilar, an extremely bright and magnificent teal-ish green with a vibrant yellow edge was dancing around the edge of the circle
- soared 1y agoYou can also look at the background about halfway through and get a large circle of the new color, the same size as the original circle.
- AlphaAndOmega0 1y agoTo me, it seemed to be a visual equivalent of that auditory trick where a note seems to descend or ascend in pitch indefinitely. The outer aura of color seemed to be shrinking constantly.
- drcongo 1y agoThe Shepard Tone - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone - brilliantly used by Hans Zimmer in the Dunkirk score.
- isoprophlex 1y agoAt the end, the green circle had a very intense grainy, hypersaturated quality for me. Not like the shimmering aura that shrinks with the red circle, but still there was something magical going on. I looked away, and then back to the screen, and the effect was gone. It was only in my head. Wow. A super fun, delightful experience indeed.
- fivestones 1y ago
- tanepiper 1y agoInteresting colours coming out of it - a while back I suspected I have https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy since I was able to describe colours more vividly that others, and certain plants for me like Verbena have a glow around them.
- Aardwolf 1y agoI'd love it if there was someone with tetrachromacy who also knows a bit about color theory and perception and can talk about it! How do you describe the experience scientifically? Do you get a whole bunch of extra colors you'd want to give a distinct name since they're so clearly different from the standard trichromatic colors? Is a computer screen annoying because it can only produce a subset of the colors you can see? Do you notice that you have a fourth parameter or dimension in the colors you see, so would want a 4th component in RGB, HSV, etc... color sliders? E.g. for our HSL, would the fourth parameter be hue-like, saturation-like, lightness like or some completely novel other thing? If hue like, do the hues also form a 2D sphere or torus like topology similar to how our trichromatic hue forms a circle? I'd expect at least twice or 3x as many named colors, since for every regular color (red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, pink, grey, brown, black, white, ...) , you'd have a fourth dimension altering it that can be low, medium or high in value ... E.g. for our yellow, you'd have yellow with not the extra signal, a bit of the extra signal or lots of the extra signal. Is this the case or not? Perhaps the overlapping reduces it, but as said in the article trichromats also have overlap yet we definitely see a lot more distinct colors than dichromats.
- dr_dshiv 1y agoYou can ask this lady: https://concettaantico.com/ https://concettaantico.com/
- dr_dshiv 1y agoSome people with two X chromosomes have this ability. And all birds. If you are bored, try to get Gemini/claude to make a color wheel for birds or tetrachromats. An aside: Recently I learned that birds are reptiles. That hurt my brain and I’m still recovering. Especially since the modern dinosaur exhibit claiming this fact contradicted the 1980s era reptiles exhibit down the hall (both at the British museum).
- nvch 1y agoIt's enough to stare at anything for a few minutes without moving eyes to get similar effects and hallucinations. We see with good resolution only a small part of our visual field. Perhaps the brain starts to "invent" what's there it we don't give it information by constantly moving eyes. As a more advanced version, they say that fire kasina practice may produce very interesting visual effects.
- juliushuijnk 1y agoTo get 'speed up' the effect, move your face close (to the red) then away from your screen.
- georgecmu 1y agoFor whatever reason, evolution decided those wavelengths should be overlapping. For example, M cones are most sensitive to 535 nm light, while L cones are most sensitive to 560 nm light. But M cones are still stimulated quite a lot by 560 nm light—around 80% of maximum. The reason is simple: genes coding the long wave opsins (light-sensitive proteins) in these cones have diverged from copies of the same original gene. The evolution of this is very interesting. Mammals in general have only two types of cones: presumably they lost full color vision in the age of dinosaurs since they were primarily small nocturnal animals or lived in habitats with very limited light (subterranean, piles of leaves, etc.) Primates are the notable exception, and have evolved the third type of cone, enabling trichromatic color vision, as a result of their fruitarian specialization and co-evolution with the tropical fruit trees (same as birds, actually). So, what's interesting is that New World and Old World primates evolved this cone independently. In Old World primates the third cone resulted from a gene duplication event on the X chromosome, giving rise to two distinct (but pretty similar) opsin genes, with sensitivity peaks at very close wavelengths. As a note, because these genes sit on the X chromosome, colorblindness (defects in one or both of these genes) is much more likely to happen in males. New World primates have a single polymorphic opsin gene on the X chromosome, with different alleles coding for different sensitivities. So, only some (heterozygous) females in these species typically have full trichromatic vision, while males and the unlucky homozygous females remain dichromatic. Decent wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_color_vision_in_primates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_color_vision_in_p... Types of opsins in vertebrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate_visual_opsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate_visual_opsin
- im3w1l 1y ago> So, only some (heterozygous) females in these species typically have full trichromatic vision Wow that's wild how heterozygousity can be that helpful. Makes you wonder if there are other genes like that.
- rozab 1y agoSome human females have functional tetrochromatic vision. https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2191517 https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2191517
- ComplexSystems 1y agoIs this just my device, or is there no way to use this roll-your-own SVG generator to actually roll your own? I can only pick from a tiny subset of preset colors, most of which seem super random and desaturated and not what I want. There's no FFFF00 yellow, for instance. Is there some way to enter an arbitrary RGB color that I am not seeing? If not, why on Earth write such an interesting article, advertise this custom SVG generator and then build the interface that way? :/
- altairprime 1y agoDoes tapping on the horizontal color box to the right of the sentence “Select any color” under heading “Inside Color (Circle)” open a color picker? If not, perhaps your browser has a defective <input type=color> implementation, i.e. Firefox for Android [1796343]?
- vintermann 1y agoTelenor's net nanny (which I didn't ask for) has decided that dynomight.net is dangerous and DNS blocked it.
- DavidVoid 1y agoRan into the same thing. Changing to a non-default DNS fixed it.
- perching_aix 1y agoSo change your router settings to offer a different default DNS via DHCP? Maybe configure your device(s) to use some other specific DNS servers rather than the ones offered via DHCP? For the site operator: the domain is present in the Spamhaus DBL (Domain Block List), which is presumably why these lovely gents are having issues, might wanna check that out.
- dynm 1y agoThanks for pointing this out. I submitted a request to spamhaus but it's an auto-responder black hole that tells me to contact my "IT department". (My personal blog, oddly enough, does not have one.) They don't explain why this domain which has no ads, sells nothing, and never sends email would be listed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lubujackson 1y agoCross your eyes like a magic eye image when it's shrinking and the vivid color will expand to a larger patch.
- pixelpoet 1y agoIncidentally the linked Skytopia page is that of Daniel White, who originally described the Mandelbulb: https://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbrot.html https://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbrot.html / https://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html https://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html
- weinzierl 1y ago"If you’re colorblind, I don’t think these will work, though I’m not sure." Should work for anomalous trichromats (by far the majority of people with color deficiencies) but probably with less intensity. "Folks with deuteranomaly have M cones, but they’re shifted to respond more like L cones." I don't think this is true. What would the difference between deutan and protan then be? "Why do you hallucinate that crazy color? I think the red circle saturates the hell out of your red-sensitive L cones. Ordinarily, the green frequencies in the background would stimulate both your green-sensitive M cones and your red-sensitive L cones, due to their overlapping spectra. But the red circle has desensitized your red cones, so you get to experience your M cones firing without your L cones firing as much, and voilà—insane color." I think only people with missing L cone (Protanopia) or M cone (Deiteranopia) would not experience the phenomenon at all. Maybe this could be used as a new type of color deficiency test?
- bluGill 1y agoI didn't see anything, probably because my M cones were also saturated more than a normal person. (though it is also possible I did it wrong?)
- peterisza 1y agoA bit unrelated but I found this interesting: water is transparent only within a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, so living organisms evolved sensitivity to that band, and that's what we now call "visible light". http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Chemical/imgche/waterabsorb.gif http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Chemical/imgche/w...
- peterisza 1y agoA guy copied&pasted this comment to X and got 42k likes lol: https://x.com/sridatta/status/1947180254684237851 https://x.com/sridatta/status/1947180254684237851
- teslabox 1y agoAt least he gave credit to HN, so the diaspora could find the source. The article is interesting. I think more needs to be said about how our eyes perceive color w.r.t. led lighting.
- dennis_jeeves2 1y agoInteresting, given that most life is water based, most life will respond the most to this spectrum.
- andyferris 1y agoGiven the fluid inside your eyeball is mostly water, this is probably very related. It’s interesting (kinda optimal) that different cones explore near both edges.
- doubleunplussed 1y agoI thought it was mostly that those are the wavelengths output out by the sun. But I guess it could be both.
- davrosthedalek 1y agoThe sun is very close to a black body radiator, so all wavelength. The atmosphere and water filters a lot. It is actually quite strange that plants are green -- that's the wavelength the atmosphere lets through particularly well, so would be particular good to be absorbed instead of reflected, for energy production. It seems nature hasn't come up with a good, cheap way to move the absorption into that wavelength.
- rezmason 1y agoI just want a display with a primary at 460nm. That's all I ask.
- perching_aix 1y ago> If you refused to look at the animation, it’s just a bluish-green background with a red circle on top that slowly shrinks down to nothing. That’s all. But as it shrinks, you should hallucinate a very intense blue-green color around the rim. I do not believe I have any kind or amount of colorblindness, so imagine my surprise when extremely confused I pulled the image into MS Paint, used the Color Picker tool, and found that indeed, the background has quite a bit of blue in it. Anyhow, I cannot reproduce the illusion cited. For me the circle just blurs out and I start seeing orange.
- blincoln 1y agoIf you make the outer colour yellow using the custom colour option, and the inner circle red, do you see a an aurora-green halo? Or if you make the outer circle yellow and the inner circle green, do you see a red halo?
- perching_aix 1y ago> If you make the outer colour yellow using the custom colour option, and the inner circle red, do you see a an aurora-green halo? You mean this, right? https://dynomight.net/img/colors/generate.html?inside=ff0000&outside=b06400 https://dynomight.net/img/colors/generate.html?inside=ff0000... The background turns green (???) eventually, kind of like as if ink started to spread across it. Or you meant full yellow (255r, 255g, 0b) and full red (255r, 0g, 0b)? > Or if you make the outer circle yellow and the inner circle green, do you see a red halo? I used the controls this time and made the background full yellow (255r, 255g, 0b) and the inner circle full green (0r, 255g, 0b). Also adjusted the countdown speed, I realized I wasn't patient enough to wait out the 60s before ever (but that also it didn't need to be so long). During countdown the entire image turned green. Whenever my eyes would move a bit, I'd see either a 3D shadow depth effect or a yellow aura around the circle. When the circle started getting smaller I just saw the yellow aura. Whenever I'd drastically move my eyes, the entire background would revert to yellow, but would quickly go back to seeing green. I don't really see them being unusually saturated though, but maybe I just don't have a good grasp on what to expect. Maxed out R/G/B or C/M/Y all strike me as super saturated from the get-go.
- blincoln 1y agoI did a custom combination of yellow outer field, blue inner circle, and got a vibrant purple halo, which is not what I expected. I assumed it would be "yellow++", based on what I know about the human eye's colour sensitivity. I didn't expect a strong effect, because the overlap between blue and red/green is so much less than the overlap between red and green, but bright purple is close to the opposite of what I expected. I'm genuinely puzzled.
- dreijs 1y agoThat is interesting - I tried the setup you suggested and actually did see something that could be described as yellow++, with maybe a hint of gold/orange It was also very intense, like staring into the sun. I observed this for both of the two default yellow tints that I could choose via the (Windows?) color picker I have no idea why this would differ between individuals Edit: link below with FFFF00 for yellow https://dynomight.net/img/colors/generate.html?inside=0000ff&outside=ffff00&size=400&countdown=60&shrink=30&mode=shrink https://dynomight.net/img/colors/generate.html?inside=0000ff...
- blincoln 1y agoThank you. I retried it first thing in the morning, in the dark, with my phone screen at minimum brightness, and no contact lenses in, and I got the expected result - vivid gold for my original setting, vivid yellow for yours. After putting my contacts in, under medium ambient light, with my phone screen at medium or full brightness, I get the purple ring, but now that I'm looking for it, I can see an outer ring of gold or yellow as well. The effects is much less pronounced if I put on my reading glasses (while still wearing contacts), so I think it must be an artifact of the contact lenses, probably in combination with the conditions they're supposed to correct (nearsightedness + astigmatism), as well as age-related inability to focus on tiny details with my contacts in.
- riknos314 1y agoCan you share settings and/or a link so an exported SVG?
- anigbrowl 1y agoPainters have been aware of this distinction for years. I encourage interested readers to get a good artist's book on color or just head for your local art store and explore the differences between pthalo and viridian greens (or any of many other surprisingly different tonal clashes).
- ErigmolCt 1y agoThere's a reason artists obsess over their palettes
- deadbabe 1y agoThe green I see around the red circle is exactly the color of a green traffic light bulb when lit, which has a hint of blue to it and is not actually pure green.
- pb060 1y agoI don’t understand why you need the animation. If you point at the green background after staring the red one for a while, you can see a whole circle of the saturated color.
- spragl 1y agoI agree, that you dont. As far as I can tell, the effect comes from superimposing an after-image on some other image.
- zahlman 1y agoYou clearly demonstrated that you don't need the animation. However, it's a convenient way to keep you staring in the same place and not have to do anything else to cause the effect.
- pb060 1y agoIncidentally, it’s also a demonstration that you shouldn’t use high contrast in typography. When you start the test you can clearly see the lines of text retained on your retina.
- rvnx 1y agoThe same with MacBooks in dark mode, once you turn around you can see large horizontal lines separated at regular intervals that are maybe due to the refresh rate of the screen (or something else, if someone knows)
- chromakode 1y agoIn my experience these are after exposures from lines of text. They get blurred together into indistinct lines because your eye focus moves between words, superimposing them.
- ErigmolCt 1y agoSometimes "crisp" quickly turns into "burned into your vision"
- ErigmolCt 1y agoThe part about bypassing our cone overlap with direct stimulation is wild, like hacking your brain's display settings
- zahlman 1y agoMy first thought was whether users of psychedelics who report seeing strange colour halos are experiencing something similar.
- alkyon 1y agoAll of this resembles techniques of Op Art, for instance Fangor's works: https://www.beloosesky.com/artists/wojciech-fangor https://www.beloosesky.com/artists/wojciech-fangor
- ziofill 1y agoI was at a physics conference once and the RGB cable for the presentations was a bit faulty and one of the color channels wouldn’t work, and this presenter’s slides were all tinted cyan. After a bit of jiggling it finally worked and the slides went back to normal, but everyone heard an old professor on the first row go “on no, now they’re purple!”
- MarkusQ 1y agoYou found the person who'd been looking at the presentation the whole time, and not down at their phone.
- optiot 1y agoThe color I saw reminded me a lot of the kind I see when I close my eyes after accidentally looking at something too bright. I wonder if they could be related?
- cubefox 1y agoThe color (at least to me) doesn't actually look blue-green, but rather cyan-green. This "tertiary" color halfway between cyan and blue (#00FF80) is apparently called "spring green": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_green I wonder whether there is a physiological explanation for this.
- zahlman 1y agoThere is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44635782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44635782
- cubefox 1y agoI'm talking about the newly induced color, not the one of the background.
- zahlman 1y agoThe description of the induced colour is subjective, of course. And cyan is in the blue direction from green.
- cubefox 1y agoBut equally, yellow is in the red direction from green, and surely yellow-green is different from red-green. Although... Perhaps "red-green" is just another name for yellow, and "blue-green" just another name for cyan.
- evanb 1y agoMany years ago [1] I was led to a marvelous site explaining many subtleties of human color perception, including the three cone primaries. The author called this pure-M-cone response "psychedelic aquamarine"; the page is offline but the archive has a capture [2]. I haven't seen this color referred to by that name elsewhere, but I think it's a good name. I think I can see psychedelic aquamarine and the other cone primaries by closing my eyes and rubbing my eyelids while pressing in gently but firmly. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813656 [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160306132951/https://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/colour/primary.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160306132951/https://casa.colo...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- blurbleblurble 1y agoWoah... did anyone else experience a noticeable desaturated sense of color after coming out of a couple rounds of those things? Like the world was in sepia tone?
- terribleperson 1y agoNot across my whole vision since I was using a phone, but yes.
- a_t48 1y agoIf/when we get BCI that inject a UI into our central nervous system, I’m sure this will get overused. :)