Science says pink doesn't exist

Hollywood unleashed a pink wave across the world in 2023, from fashion to everyday life. What is not impressed is electromagnetism: for it this color is fake. But science is one thing, human perception is another. Pink, shock or baby, for those whose world has become a little pinker in 2023 – especially due to the global success of the Barbie movie – science has bad news: there is, in the world, no visible light spectrum, the wavelength associated with shades of pink. In other words: for physics, pink does not exist.

The colors seen by the human eye are the result of electromagnetic waves that make up visible light. When white sunlight, a mixture of all colors, is refracted like a rainbow, this color spectrum reveals itself. Depending on their physical and chemical composition, objects reflect certain wavelengths that are picked up by the eye and interpreted by the brain as colors.

The science behind the visible

The visible spectrum includes a very low range of frequencies: at the lower end (waves of about 700 nanometers) in red, and at the higher end of energy (400 nanometers) in violet. Pink tones do not appear anywhere: objects perceived in this way do not reflect photons of a specific meridian, but rather a mixture of pure red and blue, which the human brain interprets as pink.