Artist’s impression of the weevil.
University College Cork
Researchers realised a dull-looking 13,000-year-old weevil was actually covered in brilliant green, blue and yellow nanoscopic crystals.
Shutterstock
Viruses exist in a realm where there is no light and colour has no meaning. In their COVID-19 depictions, designers, illustrators and communicators make some highly creative and evocative decisions.
University of Sydney Library
Green is lethal: the colour of radioluminescent paint, arsenic and chlorine gas. It is also the colour of crime fiction paperbacks.
The Orange Problem, 2019, Acrylic on panel, 72 x 72 cm. © Robert Pepperell 2019.
The author
When we look at art we may not all see the same thing. It all depends on what happens in our brains.
FJAH/Shutterstock
Scientists have discovered how the wise old barn owl is so good at catching rodents.
Experimentally heated quartzite at different stages of heating.
Bentsen and Wurz, 2019, Journal of Field Archaeology
Researchers can more easily compare heated rocks from different studies and areas.
Colour blind people are really good at spotting things that are far away, and they are better than most people at telling things apart by their shape.
Shutterstock
Some colour blind people only have two kinds of cone cell in their eye. Others have three kinds, but the cones do not pick up the same light waves as the cone cells in most people’s eyes do.
We don’t all see the same.
Shutterstock.
What colours we see depends not just on how things are in the world around us, but also on what happens in our eyes and our brains.
In the wild, when crabs and prawns are freely moving on the ocean floor, their shells usually have a dull colour.
Cindy Zhi NY-BD-CC
When crustaceans are cooked, some chemicals in their shells react with heat and change colour.
Pexels
How our life experiences change the way we perceive colours.
Claude Monet, France, 1840-1926, La pie (The magpie), 1868-1869, oil on canvas, 121.4 x 164.1 cm.
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France, ©photo Musée d'Orsay / rmn
Claude Monet painted The Magpie in winter 1868, turning his interest in colour on the blank canvass of snow.
Esref Armagan.
Turkish painter Esref Armagan uses colour and perspective that he has never seen.
Green screen technology has become a common feature of film and TV production.
Vancouver Film School/Flickr
From Superman to Jurassic Park, green screen technology is what makes the jaw-dropping effects you see in blockbuster movies possible. But how does it work?
Cate Watkinson, Colour Columns. © Chris Davis
An unlikely combination of artists, medieval historians, philosophers and scientists have converged to create an exhibition of glass artworks.
Bokeh Art Photo/Shutterstock.com
It has long been known that colour and emotion are linked – so could colour could be used as a language to express how we feel?
Red makes a big impact, studies show.
Twinsterphoto/shutterstock
Colour can have surprising effects on us, which we are only now beginning to understand.
Bathing in pure colour can have effects on the body and mind.
The brain processes colour in more ways that just creating visual images – here’s how.
Everyone sees them all, but we don’t all give them the same distinct names.
lazyllama/Shutterstock.com
People across the globe all see millions of distinct colors. But the terms we use to describe them vary across cultures. New cognitive science research suggests it’s about what we want to communicate.
Rainbows get their round shape from a process called reflection.
Flickr/Luigi Mengato
Georgina, age 5, wants to know why rainbows are round.
India’s tricolour (which actually has four colours) hides a complex subaltern history that originates with Mahatma Gandhi.
Adam Jones/Flickr
As India celebrates its independence, the flag is on full display, but few people know about the complex origins of this ubiquitous national symbol.