Science : Impossible colors

Impossible colors

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

According to the opponent-process theory, under normal circumstances, there is no hue that could be described as a mixture of opponent hues; that is, as a hue looking "redgreen" or "yellowblue".

Under such conditions, the edges between the stripes seemed to disappear (perhaps due to edge-detecting neurons becoming fatigued) and the colors flowed into each other in the brain's visual cortex, overriding the opponency mechanisms and producing not the color expected from mixing paints or from mixing lights on a screen, but new colors entirely, which are not in the CIE 1931 color space, either in its real part or in its imaginary parts. For red-and-green, some saw an even field of the new color; some saw a regular pattern of just-visible green dots and red dots; some saw islands of one color on a background of the other color. Some of the volunteers for the experiment reported that afterward, they could still imagine the new colors for a period of time.





I opened them in a new tab in full screen mode and zoomed in as much as I could. You cross your eyes until the white crosses join so you are staring at a third box in between the other two boxes. I saw a color different from the two boxes, two colors actually which switch back and forth, but I don't know that they were "impossible" colors. Kind of seem like paler versions of the original colors, not off the spectrum.

Re: Impossible colors

I get the same color switching on these but if I stare long enough they stabilize into a very light purple and light orange, almost a peach color. They seem to intensify the longer you stare. When I tried the "impossible" colors I didn't spend as much time so maybe it is possible to have more success with those.



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