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Magenta Ain't A Color

null-hypothesis.co.uk — A beam of white light is made up of all the colors in the spectrum. The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. But there is one color that is notable by its absence. Pink (or magenta, to use its official name) simply isn’t there. But if pink isn’t in the light spectrum, how come we can see it?

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 26, 2008

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  • inactive, on 08/26/2008, -6/+230This just blew my mind.
  • inactive, on 08/26/2008, -0/+170255, 0, 255!

    it's right there!
  • Jon211, on 08/26/2008, -8/+176Isn't magenta/pink just indigo with a higher luminescence? In the same way grey, which also doesn't appear in the spectrum, is simply black with a higher luminescence.
    Surely the spectrum simply indicates the various hues and not all the colours. Only by including saturation and luminescence do we see the other colours.
  • Cibeles, on 08/26/2008, -2/+128The article is fantastic and I really didn't know about the "hallucinations" of the brain. :)
    Thanks for the article and the website, they are both great. :)
  • inactive, on 08/26/2008, -19/+125Guys love Pink...
  • Syphon0928, on 08/26/2008, -1/+101Don't tell that to T-Mobile. They'll sue you for defaming the color they "own"...
    http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/09/know-your-right ...
  • DragoonWraith, on 08/26/2008, -1/+88Cool article, poor title.

    The thing with the disappearing colors on the last pic is crazy.
  • smokeydbear, on 08/26/2008, -1/+73Magenta Ain't A [Monochromatic] Color.

    There, fixed that for ya. Neither is white, by the way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome#Theory
  • r4agreements, on 08/26/2008, -0/+63I'm staring at the pink circle at work and I sense people looking at me.
  • ishotthedoor, on 08/26/2008, -9/+65Main Entry: ain't
    Pronunciation: ˈānt
    Etymology: contraction of are not
    Date: 1749
    1 : am not : are not : is not
    2 : have not : has not
    3 : do not : does not : did not —used in some varieties of Black English
    usage

    Although widely disapproved as nonstandard and more common in the habitual speech of the less educated, ain't in senses 1 and 2 is flourishing in American English. It is used in both speech and writing to catch attention and to gain emphasis . It is used especially in journalistic prose as part of a consistently informal style . This informal ain't is commonly distinguished from habitual ain't by its frequent occurrence in fixed constructions and phrases . In fiction ain't is used for purposes of characterization; in familiar correspondence it tends to be the mark of a warm personal friendship. It is also used for metrical reasons in popular songs . Our evidence shows British use to be much the same as American.
  • solistus, on 08/26/2008, -1/+55You're correct that saturation and luminescence are needed to understand specific colours. However, the fact remains that magenta 'works' differently. We might call certain shades of indigo pink, but that doesn't change the fact that our eyes 'break the rules' and show us pink rather than green when we see red and violet mixed.
  • Chipsandsnacks, on 08/26/2008, -0/+47So all those printer cartridges I bought weren't REAL?????
  • FLarsen, on 08/26/2008, -0/+45Yes.
  • inactive, on 08/26/2008, -3/+46So,, Magenta will never be the new Black?
    :)

  • and303, on 08/26/2008, -2/+42Congrats on ruining a perfectly good subtle joke.
  • DucoNihilum, on 08/27/2008, -0/+32This thread went downhill fast.
  • xadamxwaltonx, on 08/26/2008, -3/+35"It's not pink. It's lightish red."
  • username7410, on 08/27/2008, -1/+27Yep, next time your printer runs out of toner just remember; It's all in your mind.
  • gmiley, on 08/27/2008, -0/+26I've always wondered if everyone does actually interpret colors the same way. I'm sure we do, but i still wonder if it's possible that my red would actually be green if I saw it through someone else's eyes.
  • AmICoolNow, on 08/27/2008, -0/+25From the comments: "LMFAO@1:53 "
  • ssavoy, on 08/27/2008, -0/+24The ink is a lie.
  • Jforsyth89, on 08/26/2008, -0/+23Added to my "Weird Things Your Body Does That Are Interesting To Bring Up In A Conversation" list.
  • ishotthedoor, on 08/26/2008, -1/+24http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ain%27t
  • dinostabOMG, on 08/27/2008, -2/+23It's a bit misleading. FTA:

    This means that colours only really exist within the brain – light is indeed travelling from objects to our eyes, and each object may well be transmitting/reflecting a different set of wavelengths of light; but what essentially defines a ‘colour’ as opposed to a ‘wavelength’ is created within the brain.

    Which means that they themselves understand that their title is not true - Magenta isn't a particular wavelength, but it IS a color. Now the real question: Digg up for an interesting article, or bury for a sensationalist title?
  • AmICoolNow, on 08/27/2008, -2/+22...There are a lot of scientists in here, aren't there?
  • AxsToro, on 08/26/2008, -3/+23Well... Black isnt a color either..
  • ZackScott, on 08/26/2008, -2/+19Actually what I am worried about most is if the way I see violet or red is the same as others. Who cares about pink? What about those two? What if others see them differently? How will I one day know? A brain altercation? Probably not, not in my lifespan at least. It reminds me of the story of the goliath turtle. I didn't write it, but basically there was an age-old turtle who was like in his 200s, and he met a young turtle in his 10s. The youngster was happy, healthy, and wise, and the age-old turtle was just wise. So all he gained with age was a subtraction of a set of things about him. So he figured he would swap heads. Well, it didn't work out, because he took his own head off first and died. It turned out all of his wisdom was useless.
  • inactive, on 08/26/2008, -2/+19HU HU HU HU....UH HU. Shuddup Beavis.
  • diggstown, on 08/27/2008, -0/+16It's a sailboat!
  • LeviTheSmith, on 08/26/2008, -2/+18I wonder if midgets have dreams? are they like us?
  • inactive, on 08/26/2008, -0/+16No, he didn't see it.
  • Zipko, on 08/27/2008, -0/+16Another good "hallucination of the brain" is examining the blind spot in your eye. There's a spot in your field of vision that has no receptors in your eye and you actually can't see anything there. Rather than leave a hole in your vision the brain artificially fills in that space with a guess at what's there.

    Take a look at this link, there's a few good experiments to demonstrate it.
    http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html
  • inactive, on 08/27/2008, -3/+19@fyngyrz
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta

    No, you're wrong. Magenta is not simply a wavelength of light, it is a combination of different wavelengths. Holy hell - I know digg is the place to come to see people find controversy with any issue under the sun, but now we have diggers attacking basic, elementary physics? Science - it works, bitches.
  • mcsenget, on 08/27/2008, -0/+15I have always wondered that too and when I explain the idea to people, they never understand.
  • solistus, on 08/26/2008, -0/+15No colour we see in reality is truly monochromatic. There's a simple rule to figure out how our brain interprets mixed wavelengths; it basically interprets it as one colour, the average wavelength. This is why red and yellow 'average' to orange, or blue and yellow to green. Magenta/pink is an exception to that rule; polychromatic light that 'should' look green will look pink if it's made up of red and violet, or it will 'correctly' look pink if it's made up of other colours (like blue and yellow, the example I already used). There's nothing unusual about the fact that pink is polychromatic, but there _is_ something unusual about the unique way our brain interprets the range of wavelength mixes that we see as pink. They "should" be green. Imagine how confusing that would be, if mixing two 'hot' colours gave you green?
  • Syric, on 08/26/2008, -1/+16This is truly mind-blowing. I'm practically in hysterics right now.

    No joke.
  • floridiot2, on 08/26/2008, -1/+17http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN4_Q7SBC7s
  • Nightspark, on 08/26/2008, -0/+15You are correct: the article is wrong.

    Pink and magenta are not synonymous. The article is talking exclusively about magenta; pink is a light red.
  • dinostabOMG, on 08/27/2008, -1/+16Another beef I have with the article - don't most people consider magenta to be "hot pink" as distinct from pink? What I consider pink is a desaturated red, whereas magenta has a totally different hue index.
  • EtherGnat, on 08/26/2008, -0/+14All the words in the dictionary have changed and been bastardized over time. Words are not inherently right or wrong--they have whatever value and meaning we assign to them. You can fight ain't if you wish; you might even win. It's guaranteed that language will continue to evolve whether you like it or not, though.
  • ebbv, on 08/26/2008, -27/+40THIS IS ***** RETARDED THERE ARE A TON OF SHADES OF COLORS THAT ARE NOT IN THE ***** RAINBOW YOU RETARDS.
  • cadmiumpaint, on 08/26/2008, -1/+14Magenta exists in printing...CMYK where red, green and blue do not.
  • davidrools, on 08/26/2008, -8/+21I challenge the fact that a dictionary entry proves a word's validity. Case in point: irregardless, a double negative erroneously constructed by combining regardless and irrespective. It's in the dictionary due to common (mis)usage.

    Just because everyone eats ***** doesn't mean it's food.
  • OYAHHH, on 08/26/2008, -0/+13That,

    Officially might be "pink" but it looks more purple to me.

    Pink to me is the color of the Pink Panther, the cartoon character
  • GidsR, on 08/26/2008, -1/+13So is Magenta the only colour that isn't a colour or is this newqs going to be followed by further colourful revelations?
  • Elliuotatar, on 08/27/2008, -1/+13No, that's magneta. You get purple with a lot of blue and very little red.

    Protip:
    Game developers often use Magenta as a masking color to define areas of transparency, precisely because it occurs so little in nature. And because it's ugly.
  • logandr, on 08/27/2008, -0/+12it's because it's a pigment of our imagination...
  • feliks2, on 08/27/2008, -1/+12Another (somewhat) misleading part of the article is when they talk about complementary colors. There are two main color "theories" (additive and subtractive I believe). What they talk about red and green not being compliments is true for one "theory" but not the other. So they aren't lying or anything, but they should've cleared that up.
  • JakeW, on 08/26/2008, -5/+16I stared at that ***** little dot for like 10 minutes and nothing happened.

    Am I staring at it wrong?
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