Olo (Color)(en.wikipedia.org)
466 pointsby inigyouAug 12, 2026

29 Comments

drayfieldAug 17, 2026
Is it too late to rename it to Octarine?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octarine

ChrisMarshallNYAug 17, 2026
+1 for the Sir Terry reference.

I suspect many animals experience color quite differently, including seeing infrared/ultraviolet, etc.

tiagodAug 17, 2026
No suspicion needed, that's a very well studied fact.
phikappaAug 17, 2026
In my headcanon octarine is a colour between orange and deep purple. Sometimes it has a hazy blackish halo.
indroraAug 17, 2026
I've always taken it to be that the color is unique to the situation/viewer -- a sort of pearlescent void-color that can't be described in any known language, but which just Is. More a physical phenomenon than an actual color, but distinctly hued somehow.
dejobaanAug 17, 2026
I always thought it was something like https://www.moodlight.org/ (set to 60 colors/second) or https://flashing-colors.com/ (set to 100 colors/second).

Note that those are possibly photosensitive epilepsy risks if you turn them up to 60/100.

riffraffAug 17, 2026
I think it's described as a "greenish purple" in some of the books.
RazenganAug 17, 2026
My thoughts as soon as I saw the title :)
ameliaquiningAug 18, 2026
I thought of "The Colour Out of Space".
goosetheAug 17, 2026
how bout Grorange
dorianmariecomAug 17, 2026
lol
ihaveajobAug 17, 2026
No, that's a different color.
trembolramAug 17, 2026
lol is the complementary color of olo in the theoretical lms color space.
kridsdale1Aug 17, 2026
I guess it’s #FF0033 or so.
GolfPopperAug 17, 2026
It is possible to see something close (how close I don't know) by saturating the S & M cones instead of avoiding them. Wikipedia refers to these as 'chimerical colors':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color#Chimerical_co...

GeorgelementalAug 17, 2026
toxikAug 17, 2026
This was very interesting, thank you for the link.
yborisAug 17, 2026
Love this - references one of my favorite ever optical experiences Eclipse of Titan

https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage-et.html

deIetedAug 18, 2026
BTW olo was not discovered in 2025

In ~2016 on the chan someone posted a completely unhinged post about this "bleen" "grue" color that nobody could see. it's probably lost to the ages now, but I remember it.

vanderZwanAug 18, 2026
Are you sure that wasn't referencing "grue" from this philosophical thought experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction
rashkovAug 17, 2026
wow, highly recommended
pwillia7Aug 17, 2026
incredible
reoKaneshiroAug 17, 2026
Wow, mind /eye blowing! Very insightful, thank you!
formerly_provenAug 17, 2026
This is heroin for the eyes. Once the hit is over you want to take another one and if you don't it'll take ten minutes or so until the "real" world won't feel like a bleached sepia picture any more.
eruAug 18, 2026
I saw the blue rim, but I didn't notice much effect on how the real world looked like after. But then, I'm red-green colourblind.
deIetedAug 18, 2026
tbf it's more like methylamine + P2P meth for the eyes
MisterTeaAug 17, 2026
The fun part is the big red dot on the green background animation. Even before clicking it, as my eyes dart across it, small dark blue/black electric arc like shapes manifest all around the edges of the circle either reaching to the edge of the square or curving back to the circle like solar flares. I am red-green colorblind too.
EvanAndersonAug 18, 2026
These demos really drive home the chemical / biological part of visual perception to me. As I perceive these strange new colors I can almost feel the chemical processes occurring in my cones.
saidnooneeverAug 18, 2026
weird shit that happen kinda happen to me a lot. i felt always that maybe my brain was malfunctioning.

i still kinda do, because it just happen at random when i am outside. sometimes, usually in bright morning light, sunny morning. no i dont look at the sun, yes mostly its visible looking at the blue of the sky.

last time i had it while in 1 on 1 with my manager. it took a lot of struggle not to try and rub my eye or tell her i was seeing this weird rainbow snake floating around.

overloaded cones, hopefully thats not some indication of something bad but just 'tired eyes'.

NetOpWibbyAug 18, 2026
yer a wizard
elliottkemberAug 18, 2026
Is it perhaps a scintillating scotoma? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma
tgvAug 18, 2026
I'm color blind. I do see a somewhat different, brighter color, but it isn't particularly different from normal colors. That's just me (and my fellow aberrants)?
kveykvaAug 17, 2026
This reads like an SCP article
LucAug 17, 2026
Ah, thank you. Couldn’t put my finger on it.
semolinoAug 17, 2026
Having read this comment from today detailing variance in the default Windows 95 background (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329282), I'm imagining Olo would be your wallpaper if "257 colors" could be supported.
hdzAug 17, 2026
The closest approximation to Olo colored paint you can buy is also by the company that makes some of the blackest black paint. I haven't used it personally. https://culturehustle.com/collections/paint/products/yolo-ne...
jhieseyAug 17, 2026
Note that there has been controversy for the last few years around Culture Hustle not fulfilling orders and doing other sketchy things. Just a heads up.
rebeccajaeAug 17, 2026
I had ordered something from them and it took me initiating a chargeback for them to ship anything at all. The product that arrived was of terrible quality, and their customer support email is completely useless as well, any email gets a canned "your email is very important to us!" style response. My bank denied my second chargeback request because they had technically shipped something.
zimpenfishAug 18, 2026
I've seen those complaints going around but, to add a picoGladwell of data, I've not had any problems with fulfilling orders or anything like that.
kiddicoAug 17, 2026
Lol $11280.99 now marked down to $33.99!
kridsdale1Aug 17, 2026
c22Aug 17, 2026
They also make the orangiest orange paint, the yellowest yellow, the pinkest pink, etc. At a certain point I have to wonder how much these are accurate descriptors of the paint colors vs arbitrary made up marketing nonsense.
22039dj9j3dAug 17, 2026
There is no "olo-colored" anything; that's the whole point. This is bordering on a scam.
gsteAug 17, 2026
> Only the five subjects of the Berkeley experiment have officially seen olo.

Basically equivalent to

source: trust me bro

IAmBroomAug 17, 2026
The word "officially" is the massive wiggle-word here.

Only one person on Earth has officially seen the color of my coffee mug. Send me Venmo for $10, and I'll officiate your viewing of the attached JPG....

SamBamAug 17, 2026
Except that this requires extremely specialized equipment to individually trigger specific cone cells in your eyes, so I expect they have a pretty damn good idea of who has seen this and who hasn't.
moralestapiaAug 17, 2026
So, source: trust me bro.
soupspacesAug 17, 2026
I'd heard of weasel words but now that you mention it they do tend to be rather wiggly
orthoxeroxAug 17, 2026
There's a link to Dynomight's webpage in another comment thread. I've seen olo myself with it. It's to cyan what ultramarine is to sRGB blue.
timonokoAug 17, 2026
...
SamBamAug 17, 2026
You can't have discovered this same color, solve it requires specialized equipment to see it.

The color in the Wikipedia article is just a rough approximation.

timonokoAug 17, 2026
I know that. In pure form that color it is both yellow and blue without being green. You sometimes see it in sunsets.
timonokoAug 17, 2026
---
timonokoAug 17, 2026
Goddammit. Now I remembered how you see this color. You stare the some shape of 0xFF0030 and then close yores eyes and the inverted color appears.
timonokoAug 17, 2026
Can I get note in Wikipedia for inventing this 40 years ago?
reaperducerAug 17, 2026
You stare the some shape of 0xFF0030 and then close yores eyes and the inverted color appears.

So, the cover of R.E.M.'s 1988 record titled Green, which is actually orange. You're supposed to stare at it, then close your eyes, and you see the album cover as it's intended to be viewed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_(R.E.M._album)

SamBamAug 17, 2026
No, because that's not understanding what this technology, and our cone cells, are doing.

For example, yellow has a wavelength of ~580nm. When that wavelength enters our eyes it activates both the M and the L cone cells, with the L slightly more. That differential activation between the two types of cells gives us the experience of yellow.

Blue actually activates all our cone cells, with S the most and a tiny bit of M and L.

What this technology does is selectively activate only the M cone cells.

There is no possible wavelength that activates only the M cone cells, because the combined activation spectrum of the S and L cone cells overlaps the entirely of the M spectrum. There's nothing natural that can enter our eyes and activate M without also activating L and/or S.

Therefore no one can ever have had the experience of having only their M cone cells activated with anything in the natural world. It can only have been done with this technology.

As for the experience of seeing olo, the qualia, that's almost arbitrary. The authors originally thought it was going to be the "greenest green" but it wasn't really. It wasn't possible to predict what the qualia would be, because the brain has never had that experience. For all they knew they might not have seen anything, because the brain could have just thrown up it's hands at this nonsense signal. Instead they happened to experience this teal-like color. But that wasn't a priori obvious. It's just the brain struggling to apply an experience to nonsense.

It is similar to tiring out the S and L cone cells and then looking away as you say elsewhere -- the authors mention that in the long-form article in The New Yorker -- but this is much clearer and more saturated.

amberjackAug 17, 2026
I wonder how long it will take until this is some kind of an amusement park thing or whatever.
m-hodgesAug 17, 2026
pixel_poppingAug 17, 2026
Time for a trip then.
dylan604Aug 17, 2026
"They then used lasers to deliver tiny doses of light"

I didn't know there was funding for this

tantalorAug 17, 2026
> Funding: This work was supported by a Hellman Fellowship (R.N.), FHL Vive Center Seed Grant (R.N.), Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant FA9550-20-1-0195 (J.F., C.W., W.S.T., A.R., and R.N.), Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant FA9550-21-1-0230 (J.F., H.K.D., C.W., A.E.B., S.R.H., V.P.P., W.S.T., R.S., A.R., and R.N.), National Institutes of Health grant R01EY023591 (A.E.B., B.P.S., P.T., J.E.V., W.S.T., A.R., and R.N.), National Institutes of Health grant R01EY029710 (V.P.P. and R.S.), National Institutes of Health grant U01EY032055 (V.P.P., R.S., and A.R.), and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (R.S.).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12007580/

throwaway27448Aug 17, 2026
This is how people talk about how ancient greeks viewed blue, except we actually can't see this color normally.
MarkusQAug 17, 2026
The stuff about ancient Greeks not seeing blue is absolute internet balderdash.
gherkinnnAug 17, 2026
https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/history-english-colour...

> It’s not that people in the past couldn’t see blue. Indeed, there were several words which could refer to things we would call blue today, but these words could also describe things we’d assign to other colours too, especially grey and green.

jeremyjhAug 17, 2026
Reminds me a bit of a Greg Egan story from Instantiation called Seventh Sight. Kids with artificial eyes hack them to see colors and spectrum not perceptible by humans.
pixelatedindexAug 17, 2026
I wonder why if this is the reason for the icon color of the game Olo. The left half of the icon background looks so similar.

https://www.eurogamer.net/olo-review

purplethreadsAug 17, 2026
> The color is named after its theoretical LMS color space coordinates (0, 1, 0), which spells "olo" in leet speak.

:)

Hm, so is it correct to also call it ultragreen? In the same way that ultraviolet is the same effect but for short waves?

In this regard, it can’t be that novel of a discovery.

riffraffAug 17, 2026
Ultraviolet is prnamed that because of the Latin meaning of ultra as "beyond", as it's "beyond violet" in the spectrum, same as infrared is "below red".

This would be "sideways green" perhaps :)

evanbAug 17, 2026
This page, which predates the recent olo work, calls it psychedelic aquamarine. https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/colour/primary.html
anticsAug 17, 2026
If you are interested in "imaginary" colors, the gamut is actually well-specified, and (I hope it is appropriate to comment) that I made a visualization where you can drag a selection thumb over the gamut to see the "simulated" version of that color. Also include it is a 12-step contrast-sensitive color palette generator for said imaginary colors, which would allow you to make websites and (say) vscode themes using entirely imaginary colors! https://docs.moment.dev/d/hausdorff/2zmqjlmldchela29xvbzlbki...
ameliusAug 17, 2026
We know so much about color, but we're in the dark ages when it comes to odor.
cat-whispererAug 17, 2026
is zoox olo colored?
zahlmanAug 18, 2026
> Olo was discovered on April 18, 2025 by scientists at UC Berkeley.[1][3] The color is named after its theoretical LMS color space coordinates (0, 1, 0), which spells "olo" in leet speak.[4][3]

I presume "loo" and "ool" are in-gamut? What hex values?

amoshebbAug 18, 2026
703 nm laser is almost “loo”, and 417 nm is almost “ool”. Searching those wavelengths gives me #FF0000 and #6400FF. Loo is all red and ool is all violet.
tclancyAug 18, 2026
vismit2000Aug 18, 2026
jen729wAug 18, 2026
Aha! I was trying to figure out the colour of the E5/H5 Shinkansen that are used on the Tokyo-Morioka-Aomori (Hayabusa/Yamabiko) line. This is it.

https://kagi.com/images?q=e5+h5+shinkansen&r=au&sh=fWcD0dVpC...

xpctAug 18, 2026
Since colors are an activation of rods and cones, could we simulate them by stimulating the eye nerves directly? Not necessarily to see new colors, but to replicate the experience of sight? If we managed that, wouldn't it feel exactly the same as seeing something in nature that itches the back of the eye so nicely? I suppose this is entering the brain interface territory.
agiacaloneAug 18, 2026
So weird. #00FFCC has been my terminal font color for nearly two decades now. Love the color and had no idea about the ‘imaginary’ color Olo.
iridescentformAug 18, 2026
Same thing as “ultragreen” (as in ultraviolet)
timonokoAug 18, 2026
Now I remembered how you see this color. You stare the some shape of 0xFF0030 and then close yores eyes and the inverted color appears.
redthornAug 18, 2026
Mix with yellow to get new color Yolo

This color does not give a fuck, I use it in my main CTA. People click it like 4000% more

red_admiralAug 18, 2026
Someone is trying to recreate "the seven colors of the earthly rainbow and the three extra colors you only get in Heaven" (from Scott Alexander's UNSONG).