The other day I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool to discover a new color?”
What would happen if there was a new primary color, like a brand new color that nobody had ever seen before? How would you describe it? I know that it’s impossible, but it is still fun to think about!
Being red-green colourblind, I can see lots of colours nobody else can see. Unfortunately I also can’t see some colours everyone else can. It’s like my own personal Twilight Zone.
See how kind the Brits are? We invented the traffic roundabout so Martin wouldn’t have to worry about the traffic lights. 
Martin Milner wrote:
Being red-green colourblind,
Now you wouldn’t wanting to be playing billiards or snooker would ye? Say for some coins?
MarkB
Others would know better than I, but I think physicists might find discovery of a new primary color disturbing. Might have to go rethink the nature of the universe if they had a new primary color!
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Billiards no problem, as there’s one red and two white balls, one with a dot!
I have actually potted the brown ball in snooker when I though it was a red…
I think that all of the colors have been discovered, and that it is our eyes are the things that need changing to see all of the “cool” colors. (ever notice that it is only the light waves that we cannot see that get the cool names like Ultra violet, and Infrared?)
If we can genetically modify crops, why not make it so people can see the blues that bees and other animals can?
I’ve wondered about the same thing. The colors we can see are only a very tiny little chunk of all of the types of light waves. There are other “colors” that have been discovered that our eyes do not respond to. In order of lowest to highest frequency… radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays (which are actually particles).
Interesting. I would have thought you would only see shades of blue and grey.
Are you synesthetic by any chance?
That’s not quite accurate. You see technically ALL light is particles (the juxtapostion of singular and plural is intentional). However, all light is also waves.
That’s the nature of the duality problem. Basically, all particles have wave properties, and all waves have particle properties. But the invention (or discovery) of the photon is what really brought it into perspective.
I think that it would be strange to have the ability to see into things at the same time as being able to see the more easily reflected wave lengths. But which light waves would be the most common? Would there be enough free X-Rays to even make that ability worth while? (I think that is why my X-Ray glasses never worked.) As for the radio waves, I bet that would look strange going from a city to the back woods, and seeing the change in brightness. (solar flares would give you a headache though.) I also heard that Gamma rays make the skin look green.
No, I think that I will stick with naturally abundant, easily reflected infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet.
Watching music from radio stations could get a little weird.
You get used to it.
When I was little I always used to wonder if maybe, just maybe, that what everyone else saw red I saw as blue, what everyone else saw as blue I saw as yellow, and what everyone else saw as yellow I saw as red.
I could’ve been seeing green instead of purple this while time, but everyone around me calls it purple so in effect it IS my purple.
Am I the only one?
Edit: Maybe “perceive” is a better word than “see.” I think I was a strange, little kid.
Not at all!
The philosophical question of ‘how do we know other people see colors the same?’ is
one that comes up a lot, actually. It’s natural, somehow, to ask it, when it seems absurd
to ask the same about pitch or temperature. We do, however, know that people
pretty much see colors the same way, by various psychological tests on how people
see shapes in patterns of colored dots and how they perceive contrast and so on,
that give us clues into the physiology.
I’m red-green earth-tone colorblind, by the by, a more specific version of martin’s problem.
It also turns out that women have one more type of color receptor in their retina than men
do, so they basically perceive colors red-green1-green2-blue, and men perceive
red-green(1+2)-blue. So, yes, she -can- tell better whether those colors match or not…
Now, as to why in pigments yellow becomes a primary color when in light and in retinal
receptors its red-green-blue… or why someone who’s red-green colorblind can perceive
yellow (yellow = red light + green light…) … eh… hmm. Weird stuff, color.
Light addition versus light subtraction.
I don’t remember which is which, but that’s why.
By the way, “infrared” always disturbed me to read. I always red it as In-Frar’-ed. So if I was to describe it I would call it fred and everyone would know what fred looked like. Do you want the green pepper, the red pepper, or the fred pepper.
Words describe things in an abstract way. It is the way we communicate common perceptions. (and indeed even help us perceive better) If everyone could see fred, then they could understand fred.
Fred’s my shop manager. I see him every day. He remains an enigma.
I have also thought about if everybody sees each color different, as ChrisA said.