Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a groundbreaking technology called Oz that uses laser light to make people see a completely new color — a dazzling, ultra-saturated blue-green they named olo. This new hue is unlike anything found in nature.

“Olo” was described as “a profoundly saturated teal … the most saturated natural color was just pale by comparison,” said Austin Roorda, one of Oz’s creators. The platform works by firing precise, tiny bursts of laser light at up to 1,000 light-sensitive cells — called photoreceptors — in the eye at once. With this control, researchers can make people see shapes, moving images, and especially colors that aren't normally visible.

The name Oz is a nod to The Wizard of Oz — a journey to an unknown land with sights never seen before. “We chose Oz to be the name because it was like we were going on a journey to the land of Oz to see this brilliant color that we’d never seen before,” said James Carl Fong, a doctoral student who helped develop the system.

Typically, humans see color using three kinds of cone cells in the retina: one each for blue, green, and red. But because green and red cones respond to very similar light, it's impossible in nature to trigger just the green ones alone. Oz overcomes this by activating only the green cones with laser light, letting people see what might be the “greenest green” ever — olo.

In experiments, people described olo as peacock green or blue-green, and far more intense than even a laser pointer’s green. “When I pinned olo up against other monochromatic light, I really had that ‘wow’ experience,” said Roorda.

Beyond just making people see new colors, Oz could help study vision loss and even explore whether we can expand how humans perceive color. As Roorda puts it: “I think that the human brain is this really remarkable organ that does a great job of making sense of inputs, existing or even new.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s light also reveals spiritual truths beyond our innate understanding