New colours

[Tom McGregor]

is it possible to discover a new colour, not already in the spectrum?

[Squirrel]

Almost certainly not. Although I have heard that everyone sees colours slightly differently, this difference will only be very slight (of course, there is no way to prove it, but it's a fair guess). Try looking at a brightly coloured object with one eye then the other and you might see a slight difference.

A good way to see why there can't be any new colours is to separate some white light out into a spectrum using a glass triangular prism. If you shine the separated light onto some paper then, as you know, red can be seen at one end, violet at the other, and orange, yellow etc. in between. However, this is not the complete spectrum. With typical sunlight, the separated bands of colour extend beyond what we can see: beyond red comes infrared; beyond violet comes ultraviolet. These 'invisible' frequencies of light are shining on the paper too, but we do not see them because our eyes can't detect them.

As for colours, such as brown and pink, which don't fit into the spectrum, I am guessing that they are an illusion caused by molecules, or areas, of differing colour being right next to each other and appearing to 'mix' into one colour. A bit like pixels on computer screens, maybe. White and red presumably combine in our eyes to appear as pink; a bit of everything jumbled together looks brown. There are animals that can see parts of the infrared or ultraviolet ranges of light, for example, snakes can find prey animals by detecting the infrared (heat) radiation that the animal emits. I've also been told that certain insects are attracted to flowers that are highly reflective to ultraviolet.

[Squirrel]

Sorry for dragging that on, by the way.

[tracymort]

cool question!

[Nelli]

My mate's brother once discovered a new colour, the colour 'Sprag'

[Andromeda]

what - like octarine? No. Because, by definition, the spectrum contains all colours. Electromagnetic spectrum is described by wavelength, rather than name, that is. As for naming colours, well paint manufacturers have fun over that one, terracotta dawn anyone???

Andy

[jhart999]

This is less of a scientific question and more a philosophical one: by definition the spectrum is ALL colours (as someone said) and finding a "new" one is as simple as changing the hue of an existing colour ever so slightly. However, that's not really a new colour, is it? It's a new shade, but not a new colour. But I am still intrigued by this concept of "new" colours. Things like this keep me awake at night for hours sometimes :) It's like this to me: what we haven't yet discovered (by chance, like oil, or by invention, like fire) doesn't exist because we (man) haven't seen it and cannot, therefore, comprehend it. But it DOES exist (even if it needs inventing because the component parts are there). Isn't that crazy? But I don't think we can discover new colours because as humans we've pigeon-holed the definition of colour with the concept of the human-visible spectrum. Wherever we travel in the future we will only see the colours in existance today (unless evolution gives us the vision to "see" UV, infrared and other currently "invisible" radiation) because a colour is the product of light, texture, pigment, etc. and these are all components that we've also defined very precisely. So although I might sound mad, maybe the only way to discover a new colour is to redefine and expand our ideas on such things as light and radiation (essentially light caused by heat). For example, if we travel far enough in space we might find new forms of radiation visible to us. But that's unlikely since the kind of radiation coming from the Sun is found in the stars we see all around Earth and they're very, very, very far away :)

[Nelli]

Exactly rather like, 100 years ago or so, (Mmmmm perhaps longer) they laughed at the idea of their being things as small as atoms. Just because it has not been discovered of proved, does not mean it doesn't exist!