A team of scientists claims to have discovered a new colour that humans cannot see without the help of technology. The researchers based in the United States said they were able to "experience" the colour, which they named "olo", by firing laser pulses into their eyes using a device named after the Wizard of Oz. Olo cannot be seen with the naked eye, but the five people who have seen it describe it as being similar to teal. Professors from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington School of Medicine published an article in the journal, Science Advances, on April 18 in which they put forth their discovery of a hue beyond the gamut of human vision. They explained that they had devised a technique called Oz, which can "trick" the human eye into seeing olo.

The availability of large, public, multi-modal astronomical datasets presents an opportunity to execute novel research that straddles the line between science of AI and science of astronomy. Photometric redshift estimation is a well-established subfield of astronomy. Prior works show that computer vision models typically outperform catalog-based models, but these models face additional complexities when incorporating images from more than one instrument or sensor. In this report, we detail our progress creating Mantis Shrimp, a multi-survey computer vision model for photometric redshift estimation that fuses ultra-violet (GALEX), optical (PanSTARRS), and infrared (UnWISE) imagery. We use deep learning interpretability diagnostics to measure how the model leverages information from the different inputs. We reason about the behavior of the CNNs from the interpretability metrics, specifically framing the result in terms of physically-grounded knowledge of galaxy properties.

The mantis shrimp boasts one of the most powerful and ultrafast punches in nature--it's on par with the force generated by a .22-caliber This makes the creature an attractive object of study for scientists eager to learn more about the relevant biomechanics. Among other uses, it could lead to small robots capable of equally fast, powerful movements. Now, a team of Harvard University researchers has come up with a new biomechanical model for the mantis shrimp's mighty appendage, and it built a tiny robot to mimic that movement, according to a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast.

A tiny shrimp snaps its claw in less than 0.01 seconds, around 10,000 times quicker than the blink of a human eye. The movement is so rapid it creates an audible pop above the water and produces bubbles. The engorged claw shuts in just 93 microseconds, moving at around 38 mph. Human eyes take about 150 milliseconds to complete the process of blinking. Researchers from Duke University in the US say the shrimp combines a unique set of traits which make the speed all the more impressive. It is not the fastest appendage movement in the animal kingdom, with the jaws of some terrestrial animals matching and exceeding its velocity.

The pistol shrimp, aka the snapping shrimp, is a peculiar contradiction. At just a few inches long, it wields one proportionally sized claw and another massive one that snaps with such force the resulting shockwave knocks its prey out cold. As the two bits of the claw come together, bubbles form and then rapidly collapse, shooting out a bullet of plasma that in turn produces a flash of light and temperatures of 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's right--an underwater creature that fits in the palm of your hand can, with a flick of its claw, weaponize a blast of insanely hot bubbles. Now scientists are learning how to wield this formidable force themselves.

Imagine for a second that you're a crab, and a fellow crustacean called a mantis shrimp has decided to make you its lunch. The truth is, it's not worth struggling. The mantis shrimp uses muscles to cock back two hammer-like appendages under its face, storing energy in a saddle-like divot in the limbs. When it releases the latch, the hammers accelerate so quickly, and strike your shell with such brutality, that they produce cavitation bubbles in the water, which collapse and release a secondary shockwave that knocks you out cold. That's a lot to unpack, and no one knows the struggle better than scientists. For years, they've been using high-speed photography to figure out how a little crustacean can manage what is perhaps the most powerful pound-for-pound punch in the animal kingdom--and in the significant extra drag of water, no less.

The most impressive jaws in nature belong not to a bear or a shark but an insect called Odontomachus bauri. Popularly known as the trap-jaw ant, its mandibles, which it uses to snatch prey and catapult itself away from danger, accelerate shut at 1 million meters per second squared. The force from each jaw exceeds the insect's body weight more than 300 times over, propelling the ant to heights as lofty--for an bug, anyway--as eight centimeters, and distances of close to 40 centimeters. The insect's secret is a spring-latch system that allows it to store large amounts of energy and release it almost instantaneously. Such systems are common in small organisms, including animals (like the infamously pugilistic mantis shrimp), plants (like the infamously carnivorous Venus flytrap), and even mushrooms, many of which eject their spores with phenomenal fungal power.

Grasping the true potential of artificial intelligence (AI) is like trying to understand how a mantis shrimp sees the world. Mantis shrimp have the best colour vision of any creature on the planet. Humans can perceive just a paltry snippet of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. We see that slice as a continuum of reflected colour from deep red to rich violet -- a rainbow flag of hues. We have three types of photoreceptors called cones, each sensitive to different wavelengths of light.