FYI for sci-fi authors:
Something that pops up in science fiction (and fantasy) from time to time is the idea of “impossible colors.” basically, people seeing colors that they *can’t* see. This is different from, say, people using sensors to view things in infra red, ultraviolet or gamma rays; these devices convert frequencies the human eye cannot see to frequencies it can. Thus, lots of “infra red” is actually just “red.” The impossible colors are either produced by some magical or ultra-alien/extra-dimensional whatzit, or are the result of the humans eyes or brains having been tinkered with.
One type of “impossible color” would be the afore-mentioned ultra violet. This sort of thing would be fairly easy to understand; just a slight modification of the existing hardware. How the brain would interpret that, though, is left to be seen… ultra violet light might be interpretted by the brain as a particular shade of blue, or it might show up as a wholly new, never-before-seen color. In the latter case, it would be an experience much like a color blind person might have if their vision was suddenly brought to standard: they might never before have actually processed the color “green,” and now they’re faced with a whole world full of a color that’s entirely new to them.
Another type of “impossible color” is a color that is a mixture that just doesn’t work, like blueish-yellow (*not* green) or reddish-green (*not* brown). Supposedly, some people can actually see such colors, but only if their brains are tricked into it. One such test is this:
Stare at this and let your eyes defocus, until the two central crosses line up. Supposedly, some people are able to see some Wholly New Color from the mix of yellow and blue. Me, I don’t. What I get is *three* boxes… blue on the left, yellow on the right, and a third box in the middle that morphs from blue to yellow and back over a span of several seconds. I’m guessing that this is the result of my tiny little brain trying to process the image, and switching back and forth from one eye to the other. Sadly, no impossible Colour Out Of Space for me.
But if it *does* work for you, then you apparently are able to see an Impossible Color. Good for you.
A few years ago I heard a tale on the radio. It sounded good, but I’ve found *zero* evidence to back it up. Never even come across another reference to the story. So it’s *probably* BS. But as the story goes, during WWII, there were a few missions on the coast of France that involved four people: one young man and one old man on the beach; one young man and one old man in a raft or other small boat a ways offshore.These occurred deep in the night on cloudy, moonless, *black* nights. What was going on? They were flashing signals back and forth using lamps. Old tech, but the trick is that the lamps were invisible. Any Germans on shore or out to sea would have seen nothing.How was this possible? Because the old men had had bad cataracts. So bad that the only way to give them any sort of vision was to remove the lens from the eye entirely, and rely on thick glasses. But the thing is… the human eye-lens absorbs UV. We don’t see in ultra violet largely because UV can’t get to the retina. But that was no longer true for these old guys. Now, UV could get to their retinas, and they could see the flashes. Trained in Morse code, they could see impossible colors, and were used to transmit vital information ahead of landing parties and the like. Sounds good. Is it true? Not that I’ve been able to determine. But if there’s any truth in *any* of this, here you’ve got evidence of humans being able to see Impossible Colors.
13 Responses to “Impossible Colors”
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I can see a couple of bands in a rainbow past the purples. Ultraviolet just looks kinda clear-ish. But it IS there.
This certainly exists. I remember seeing a video of a gentleman that had cataract surgery that removed the lens and was replaced with an artificial lens that did not filter UV radiation (all modern Intra-Ocular Implants filter it, though). I couldn’t find the video, but I did find an article with a man that has the same issue.
Read “The Colour Out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft.
Ummmm…
This is interesting. I can force the blue to bleed into the yellow, and the yellow to bleed into the blue, but as soon as the overlay matches up into one box, either the yellow or the blue will suddenly pop out. Sounds like the same result you got.
Yup. Some brains just process the visual world differently, I suppose. I have more or less perfectly average eyes… a bit nearsighted, easily corrected to 20-20 with glasses. No astigmatism, glaucoma, cross-eyed-ness or any such thing. Yet when I go to a 3-D movie, I hear people ooh-ing and ahhh-ing at the stuff leaping out at them… while it just looks mostly flat to me. Shrug. So I’ve no doubt that just as some people get more 3-D than I do, other people get more Impossible Eldritch Colour From Beyond The Wall Of Sleep than I do.
I’ve often wondered… if someday the technology becomes available to plug oneself into another persons brain, to see, hear, feel what they do… would the world actually look the same? Who’s to say that what looks like blue to me doesn’t look like red to you, and Ultra Infra X-Ray to some other guy?
I am nearsighted myself….I think somewhere around maybe 20/240 but when I went to see Avatar in
3D I didn’t have any trouble seeing the 3D effect with the 3D glasses on.
I could *see* the 3-D… it just didn’t really look all *that* 3D. Hell, the parts where I noticed it the most were the “You’re watching a 3-D movie” blurb at the beginning, and the scenes with whatzizface talking into the computer screens. All the flyin’ around bits didn’t do a thing for me, but I gather that other people thought it was pretty whiz-bang stuff.
Meat movies don’t 3D well, although they’re getting much more betterer.
Go see any of the animated Pixars, they’re bloody gorgeous. To me at least 🙂 And nope, blue or yellow and slow bleeding back and forth is all I get.
I had heard that WWII story myself, about cataract surgery giving UV vision. I think Arthur C. Clarke mentioned a variant on that story in one of his science fact essay books.
I think Arthur C. Clarke mentioned a variant on that story in one of his science fact essay books.
I’m pretty sure this is where I saw it. It might also be in Stanley P. Lovell’s book Of Spies and Stratagems.
I see a greenish band in the middle but it vibrates from blue to yellow. Has anyone ever tried to render what you see in the dark with your eyes closed? I would describe what I see is something like this: It looks like the snow you see on tv but the specs are much smaller and a combination of red and white, very faint. The “background” is a combinatiion of black mostly covered with something like violet clouds. There’s a bunch of black squiggly lines with the violet glowing aura, which is probably the cappilaries in my eyes. I heard Dave Scott, Apollo 15, say that when the astronauts closed their eyes they would often experience bright flashes due to cosmic rays.
Birds can percieve UV, from wiki
Ultraviolet
The Common Kestrel can detect the ultraviolet trail of its vole prey.Birds can perceive ultraviolet light, which is involved in courtship. Many birds show plumage patterns in ultraviolet that are invisible to the human eye; some birds whose sexes appear similar to the naked eye are distinguished by the presence of ultraviolet reflective patches on their feathers. Male Blue Tits have an ultraviolet reflective crown patch which is displayed in courtship by posturing and raising of their nape feathers.[25] Male Blue Grosbeaks with the most, brightest and most UV-shifted blue in their plumage are larger, hold the most extensive territories with abundant prey, and feed their offspring more frequently than other males do.[17]
The bill’s appearance is important in the interactions of the Blackbird. Although the UV component seems unimportant in interactions between territory-holding males, where the degree of orange is the main factor, the female responds more strongly to males with bills with good UV-reflectiveness.[26]
A UV receptor may give an animal an advantage in foraging for food. The waxy surfaces of many fruits and berries reflect UV light that might advertise their presence.[17] Common Kestrels are able to locate the trails of voles visually. These small rodents lay scent trails of urine and faeces that reflect UV light, making them visible to the kestrels, particularly in the spring before the scent marks are covered by vegetation.[27]
its just blue and yellow, flipping back and forth for me. :p