You ever thought that the violathat color you find in the cabbage, in the aubergines or in the breathtaking sunsets, in reality? Not in the traditional sense, at least. It is the result of a fascinating deception that our brain implements Every time he sees something that “seems” to purple.
To understand this phenomenon, we must start from light. What we see is only a small part of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, called visible spectrum. This goes about from 350 to 700 nanometers and includes All the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Each color has its own wavelength: the red is the “longer” one, the violet the most “short”.
Our eye perceives colors thanks to Three types of conescells sensitive to light located in the retina. These cones are sensitive to wavelengths long (red), medium (green) and court (blue). When light affects the cones in a certain combination, our brain interprets it as a certain color.
Our brain “folds” the spectrum in a circle
But here comes the mystery :. Viola is born when our eyes they receive signals together from both the red and blue cone, but not from the green. This type of combination in the linear light spectrum, because red and blue are to opposite.
So how do you “see” it? Our brain, to resolve this contradiction, “fold ”the spectrum in a circle: unites red and blue, and “invent” one new visual perception to fill the void between them. Thus was born the violaa non -spectral color, than light, but only as mental processing.
In short, purple is a perfect example of how the human perception both one cerebral construction. Colors are not objective qualities of objects, but subjective interpretations based on how our mind processes visual signals. Viola is not just beautiful: it is proof that our brain can be incredibly creative.
