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Scientists reveal purple may be an illusion, not a true colour. Unlike others, it doesn’t exist in the light spectrum but is the brain’s way of merging red and blue signals.
Purple doesn’t exist in the light spectrum.
In a revelation that upends our perception of colour itself, scientists are challenging the very existence of a hue long adored by artists, designers, and nature-lovers alike. Purple, or more precisely, the perception of it, may not be a true colour at all. Instead, it is now being described as an invention of the human brain, a creative illusion rather than a physical reality.
The study of colour is not merely a matter of aesthetics. There is deep science behind why objects appear the way they do. Every hue visible to the human eye is the result of complex interactions between light waves and matter. For instance, the brilliant petals of a flower that lure bees for pollination owe their visual appeal to specific chemical compounds that reflect certain wavelengths of light. Similarly, the changing shades of the sky are governed by the scattering of sunlight as it passes through the atmosphere.
Yet among the vast palette of natural colours, purple stands out – not because of its vibrancy, but because of its apparent nonexistence in the physical world.
Researchers now claim that purple is not actually a colour that exists in the light spectrum. There is no wavelength of light corresponding to purple, unlike red, blue, or green. Instead, purple arises from the brain’s attempt to reconcile two ends of the visible spectrum, red and blue, which it cannot merge in a straightforward way.
Here’s where the science becomes especially intriguing: the colours we see are the result of light stimulating photoreceptor cells in our eyes known as “cones.” These cones come in three types, each sensitive to a different band of wavelengths. S-cones detect short wavelengths (like blue and purple), M-cones respond to medium wavelengths (like green and yellow), and L-cones are sensitive to longer wavelengths (like red and orange).
Red and blue sit on opposite extremes of the spectrum. There is no single wavelength that bridges the two, unlike combinations like red and yellow, which mix smoothly into orange. As a result, when both red and blue light hit the eye simultaneously, the brain performs an interpretative leap: instead of rejecting the mismatched signals, it synthesises a new colour altogether, what we call purple.
According to the researchers, the mind essentially “bends” the linear colour spectrum into a circle, imaginatively linking red and blue to fill the gap with a phantom hue. Purple, then, is not the product of a direct stimulus but a neural illusion, a trick of perception that fills in a missing piece in our mental colour wheel.
This finding helps explain why purple is absent from natural displays like rainbows, which are governed strictly by the wavelengths of visible light. The acronym VIBGYOR – standing for Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red – does contain “violet”, a high-frequency colour. But what most people call “purple” is actually different. Violet light exists as a wavelength; purple does not.
So does purple exist? That depends on what you mean by “exist.” There’s no denying we see it. The experience is real. But scientifically speaking, purple is not an inherent property of any object or light wave. It’s a construct of the brain, a solution to a sensory paradox.
