Red-green and blue-yellow: stunning colors that you can not see

Try to imagine a reddish green color - not the boring brown color that you get by mixing red with green, namely one that is a bit red and a little green. Or, on the contrary, try to imagine a blue-yellow color - not green, but a shade that includes both colors. Unfortunately, you will not be able to do this - your mind can not process such information, and your eyes - to reproduce it - this has already been shown by the results of the research.

Unknown Colors

Trying to represent one of the above colors will lead to nothing - this is due to the fact that such colors exist in nature, but you have never seen them. Red-green and yellow-blue refer to the so-called "forbidden flowers". These colors consist of two shades that automatically exclude co-reproduction in the human eye, so they can not be seen simultaneously. This result is due to the fact that certain cells in the retina are responsible for specific colors, and if you look at something red, then the brain is signaled by one type of cell, and if the green one is completely different. And your brain will automatically cancel the broadcast of one of the colors - accordingly, you can never see something simultaneously red and green, or both blue and yellow. Almost never. Scientists say that you have the opportunity to see them, you just need to know exactly how to look.

Unnamed colors

The color revolution began in 1983, when the light saw the work of two scientists who claimed that red-green and blue-yellow colors can be seen. It was then that they tested, showing people images with red and green stripes adjacent to each other, and counted the data from the retina. Then it became clear that the specific cells of the retina are responsible for the reproduction of certain colors, and the eyes read simultaneously both red and green. However, the subjects said that they first saw clear boundaries between the lines, but then they began to blur, and the eyes of people appeared colors they had not seen before. Whoever looked at the image, he saw a color that was both red and green. No one could describe or name the resulting color, even an artist with a huge margin of words on this subject. The same experiment was performed with blue and yellow stripes - and the effect was exactly the same. It turned out that the forbidden colors can still be seen - and they are really gorgeous.

Dirty brown

However, this experiment did not attract much attention - he was treated like a sort of delirium crazy, which seems to exist, but everyone tries not to pay any attention to him. At the same time, similar experiments continued, and they also confirmed that if you look at the forbidden colors in a certain way, you will be able to see them. In 2006, an experiment was conducted that resembled the one that was conducted in 1983, but it was changed. This time, scientists suggested to people a color scheme on a computer on which they should find the color that was shown to them in the same way as in 1983 - a combination of colorful stripes. When the turn came to red-green and blue-yellow, people could not describe them verbally. As for the color scheme, the participants chose muddy-brown without any problems. The results showed that people perceived color is only intermediate in the process of mixing the two colors. But if the dirty-brown color is the result of confusion, why did not people in 1983 indicate it? The fact is that there is an infinite number of intermediate colors, for which there is neither a title nor a description. But only the fact that the color can not be called does not make it forbidden or nonexistent.

Color fixing

However, this research did not end there - the scientists found deficiencies in the 2006 experiment. The fact is that during this experiment the very important function of the eye was not taken into account - oculography, the researchers simply forced people to concentrate on striped images, they did not use retinal fixation. Accordingly, those colors that were noted in the 2006 experiment are unlikely to be the same colors that people saw in 1983. So far, there is no possibility for every person to see such colors, but, perhaps, in the future something will be invented that will allow people to expand their color perception.