Welcome to the first issue of The World in Color. Here, you’ll receive need-to-know, good-to-know, and weird-to-know news on color happenings in our world. 

All’s Fair in Love and Beak Color Preferences

The female zebra finch uses color to determine whether a male makes the cut. For this species, the beak color guaranteed to land a male zebra finch a date is…red.

High standards, too. Males can’t squeak by with an orangish-red red beak.

The females look for an unmistakable red beak in their potential partners. Turns out, they can spot the distinct threshold at which orange and orange-red becomes true red. Read more here.

Your X-Ray… in Living Color

Black and white x-rays may be officially out, and soon, your next trip to the doctor could be a colorful one. A New Zealand-based company uses a color medical scanner to see the human body for the first time. They can see your true colors…

Originally meant for particle imaging and detection, the Medipix3 scanner could shape up to be a powerful diagnostic tool. Its color and 3D imaging capabilities can take pictures of and identify various groups of tissue. Now, they’re using the scanner to study vascular disease. You can read more details here or here.

Because You Haven’t Heard Enough About Vantablack

Surrey NanoSystems, creators of the mind-boggling Vantablack created a sprayable version of the world’s blackest black. To prove a point, they sprayed Vantablack S-VIS on bronze masks. The result was nothing short of trippy.

But what is this sorcery?

That “trippy” quality can be attributed to Vantablack’s ultra-low reflectance. If you didn’t already know–because Surrey NanoSystems has been shouting it from the rooftops since early 2018–Vantablack absorbs 99.96% of light. Since light can’t be reflected off Vantablack’s surface, the material seems to render 3D objects two-dimensional.

As if there aren’t enough mesmerizing Vantablack videos on the internet, here’s another one to marvel at.

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