Travel faster than light is impossible. Light itself always travels at the same speed (“c”), never faster and only slower if something gets in its way.

Colours, being made of light, also travel at c. Most of them. The exciting news is, just like faster than light travel, colours can be impossible too.

Impossible colours, looking like light but not actually being it, travel not at c, but at b. Optical physicists have not yet decided what b stands for, and are not expected to for several years, but early candidates are badass and bad ass.

Now, on with our listicle. Here are 10 colours you won’t believe are impossible.

1. Stygian blue
Blue as dark as black.

2. Hyperbolic orange
Orange oranger than orange.

3. Luminous red
Red as bright as white. Haunting how you never noticed the glow, until now.

4. Brain red green
This one doesn’t even have a description but you see it, don't you. You see it and it’s as real as anything you have ever seen, and people will believe you, eventually, once you find the words.

Why won’t the words come? It’s a colour. It doesn't have lines or angles to describe, it doesn't have plumage or a bill, it doesn't require specialist language. It's a colour. It's the simplest thing there is. Pick some words.

Are the words not coming because you’re losing your edge? Because you’ve had no edge for decades and you didn’t even realize?

Can you no longer think at b? Could you ever?

5. No you couldn’t
Everyone is embarrassed to be around you.

6. Why do you even bother
You could stop. That wouldn’t bother anyone.

7. Stygian green
Green as dark as black.

8. These are beginning to repeat how many kinds of stygian are there
Infinitely many. Colours are like real numbers and impossible colours are like irrationals. Impossible colours are uncountably infinite.

9. Also there are a lot of kinds of luminous and hyperbolic, right
There you go, thinking you have a thought but your thoughts arriving at nothing approaching b, well done, good job, u r smart.

10. Brain blue yellow
This post will be updated over time and the date on this web page will grow ever less accurate, and yet you will return to it to look up impossible colours, believing your own memory but not trusting it. Brain blue yellow is also as real as any colour you have seen, and yes this sentence has always been in this paragraph. You will expect an unchanging reference. You won’t get the reference. When ever did you get the reference.
11. This is still part of item 10.