Radiolab goes colour!

Our world is saturated in color, from soft hues to violent stains. How does something so intangible pack such a visceral punch?  Jad and Robert tear the rainbow to pieces in this recent episode of Radiolab.

To what extent is color a physical thing in the physical world, and to what extent is it created in our minds? They start with Sir Isaac Newton, who was so eager to solve this very mystery, he stuck a knife in his eye to pinpoint the answer. Then, we meet a sea creature that sees a rainbow way beyond anything humans can experience, and they track down a woman who we're pretty sure can see thousands (maybe even millions) more colors than the rest of us. And we end with an age-old question, that, it turns out, never even occurred to most humans until very recently: why is the sky blue?

Pink's not a colour?

In a blog post, Robert Krulwich – of Radiolab – noted that there is no pink in a rainbow. Pink is a combination of red and violet, two colors, which, if you look at a rainbow, are on the opposite sides of the arc. That’s where the trouble lies. Pink can’t exist in nature without a little rainbow-bending help, which would allow the shades of red and violet to commingle. This is leading scientists to believe, as Krulwich puts it, that “pink is a made-up colour.” Krulwich explains:

I know, of course, that all colors are just waves of light, so every color we “see,” we see with our brains. But what this video says is that there is no such thing as a band of wavelengths that mix red and violet, and therefore, pink is not a real wavelength of light. That’s why pink is an invention. It’s not a name we give to something out there. Pink isn’t out there.

So there you have it – pink is just the wishful thinking of our brain blending the red and violet wavelengths together to create the colour of our favourite Panther.