Color OLO is one of the strangest illusions your eyes can experience, and the science behind it goes way deeper than people think. The term OLO comes from the binary number 010, a simple pattern that mirrors how your visual system reacts when it’s pushed into an imbalance between cones. The illusion is based on real research originating from scientists connected to UC Berkeley’s work on human color perception, afterimage formation, and cone-level adaptation. Your eyes aren’t just seeing red and blue. They are reacting to a temporary shift in how your M cones behave. Your eyes have three types of cones that detect colour. L cones respond strongest to red light, M cones respond to green wavelengths, and S cones detect blue. When you stare at a colour for long enough, the cones responding to that colour get fatigued and temporarily lose sensitivity. In this illusion, we deliberately make you stare at a solid red field and hold it long enough to overstimulate the L cones. Your M cones and S cones do not get the same level of stimulation, so the system becomes unbalanced. When we transition your screen to blue and make you stare at that colour, your overloaded L cones start firing at a reduced level while your M and S cones respond more normally. Your brain tries to fill the missing information by creating an afterimage that feels like a ghost of the colour OLO. The effect is a mix of cone fatigue, opponent processing, and the way your visual cortex interprets sudden changes after one cone group has been pushed too far. This illusion is not magic. It is science. It is optics. It is your own L cones and M cones fighting to recalibrate, and your brain creating colour that technically is not on your screen at all. This is the Smart Alec Chemist your are now 1% smarter! #scienceforkids #scienceexperiments #brainhacking #brainhacks #colorscience - @smartalechemist