???
Neon Beige
How are we supposed to answer that? If you could describe the colour by comparing it to an existing colour, it wouldn’t be a new colour, would it?
There are colors all around us we’ve never seen because our eyes do not detect them.
Kind of purplish green.
Octarine ofcouse 
Brown is the new black, does that count?
Brown was the new black a while ago. I believe that black is the new black now.
I thought black was the new rock and roll … hang on … or is it that golf is the new brown?
I know that Sunday is the new Saturday.
Color: something perceived by one of the three types of cones in our eyes, and sent to the visual cortex.
New color: any frequency (preferably not overlapping existing blue, green and red cone sensitivity) that’s perceived by a “new” cone.
What it would look like: Can’t be imagined, because, by definition, it is not the same as blue, green, or red. Or any combination thereof.
How we might possibly test this: Convert half of the existing cones of one color to a different frequency sensitivity. Await results and hope the brain can figure out something interesting to do with the new signals.
Cheaper way to test this: Suggest to a group of acid-heads to explore the realm of “new colors”. Acid is known to convert the input from one sense to another. The problem is that once the acid is gone, so is the effect.
Following up on partly_warmer’s post, some small percentage of women have a 4th cone that is sensitive to a different frequency than the others. The result is that they can distinguish between two shades of green that seem the same to the rest of us.
Not sure this has a factual answer. Could you elaborate?
Maybe the question has to do with the order in which colors are named. Cecil’s column: Could early man only see three colors?
In one of his Culture stories, Iain M Banks has one of his characters (a sort of genetically enhanced humanoind alien) converted into a human; humans can see a narrrower band of frequencies than the aliens and the character comments “less colours, well, not actually less, just more sort of Squashed up”
Colours are entirely an artifact of our perception of light wavelengths (or mixtures thereof), if we were able to percieve a wider band of wavelengths, there’s no reason at all why this would naturally result in us seeing them as a greater range of colours, it could just as easily result in rainbows looking a little broader and nothing more.
Conversely, there’s not much reason why we shouldn’t percieve a greater range of colours across the existing visible spectrum, all we would need is more cone types that were more narrowly tuned.
What those colours would look like is as answerable a question as whether my ‘blue’ looks the same as your ‘blue’.
To me “new color” meant actually viewing something that’s currently invisible. At least, that’s what I’ve always wondered about. What it would be like to see the infrared or ultraviolet. Extending the range of the existing cones wasn’t what I was hoping for, because I’ve seen that effect in lots of photos with false color.
An article about women with four cones, there’sthis, which includes the quote:
“The question still remains, however, whether any of these females have the neural circuitry that enables them to enjoy a different – surely richer – visual experience than the common run of humanity sees.”
Another article reports that this phenomena led to a camera called CatchLight to be developed. It costs a packet, but I think some Afga color film is also based on four emulsions.
As for what we call the colors, whether they are perceived or named similarly, it’s distinctly less exciting because people (ok, men) are generally so insensitive to describing things or communicating about color. When one of my male (or heck) female friends asks whether I think the teal in their sweater is a nice shade, I always wonder whether if they’ve been sniffing the ink in Munsell Color Charts.
The new color of the universe, Cosmic Latte.
Like all great stoner questions, this one is completely unanswerable, for the simple reason that color perception is totally subjective, and cannot be experienced by any other individual, nor can it be quantitatively measured. However, it seems highly unlikely that “other colors”, such as they might be, even exist. Carl Sagan addressed this in his last book, Billions and Billions:
“…to remarkably high precision, the human eye is most sensitive to the exact frequency in the yellow part of the spectrum at which the sun is brightest. Might other beings of some other planet see mainly at very different frequencies? This seems to me not all likely. Virtually all cosmically abundant gases tend to be transparent in the visible and opaque at nearby frequencies. All but the coolest stars put out much of their energy at visibly frequencies. It seems to be only a coincidence that the transparency of matter and the luminosity of stars both prefer the the same narrow range of frequencies. This coincidence applies not just to our solar system, but seemingly throughout the universe. It follows from fundamental laws of radiation, quantum mechanics, and nuclear physics.”
What he seems to be saying is that most of the light in the universe is detectable at the frequencies which are visible to the human eye. Turns out there just might not be any other colors; unseen colors which exist at undetectable frequencies may simply be differences in shade of the colors we can see. So the human eye can apparently see at least one shade of every color that exists. Lucky us!
Claims have been made that certain animals, such as some birds and insects, can see colors in the ultraviolet. Since this cannot be measured, and thence not proven, we cannot know. But certain structures within the eye of these species would seem to correspond with strcutures in the human eye which detect light close to the ultraviolet; hence, the conjecture that these animals are “seeing” ultraviolet light.
Color perception is utterly subjective. How do I know that my perception of ‘blue’ would not be ‘red’ to you? We would use the same word, but our experience of a color would be different. Although, we’d never know, since we cannot climb into one another’s head and look out through other eyes.
It can be argued that color perception can be measured, in a way. Tests have been performed in which the cones responisble for detecting light of a certain frequency are monitored for reaction. It can be said that one sees the color red because the cones in the eyes responsible for detecting this frequncy have reacted to the stimuli. But how the brain interprets this information cannot be known or measured.
Whew. Now who’s got some Funyuns?
I wanna see infra-red & ultra-violet. ith my own eyes, not a scanner.
I’ve heard that artificial corneas canhelp with this. True?
This would be the perfect color for my house.
Sagan, like most “lowest common denominator” populizers seemed at some point to start believing his own perfect world view. I remember hearing his loose conjecture about the Library at Alexandria, and wondering if his IQ was 90.
As Sagan very well knows, there are other stars besides yellow ones. In implying that only yellow suns have life, he probably buying another set of loose conjectures from the so-called Drake Evasion. I’m sorry, “Drake Equation”. There are, for example, blue, red and x-ray stars.
But even if colors evolve naturally only a certain way, that’s still no reason we can’t extend our vision.
Claims have been made about insects because there’s considerable evidence that two variations of flowers that look identical to us cause different reactions when insects see them.
“Subjective” means that I have a personal perception that is not necessarily shared with other people. It does not mean that no one else agrees, or even that they perceive things differently. While it’s true that at the moment there’s no way to tell whether you and I perceive the green on a dollar bill exactly the same way, it is anything but “entirely subjective”. I offer to trade you some purple $100 bills for green ones, if you like. I don’t think the FBI will ding me for creating obviously false notes.
I’ve heard that some people who take LSD are able to “hear” sounds, smell colors, etc. The color I’d like to see is orgasm blue.