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The color you see below is no ordinary hue.

It’s one of the world’s newest — and perhaps most vivid — shades of blue. It also happens to be the result of a brilliant mistake.

A team of chemists discovered YInMn blue during a chemistry experiment at Oregon State University in 2009. “It was serendipity, actually,” said Mas Subramanian, the OSU chemist who led the experiment, in a press release. “A happy, accidental discovery.”

Now scientists have perfected the pigment and it’s going on sale as an option in commercial coatings, plastics and household paint this year.

It all started when Subramanian and his team were trying to find materials with magnetic properties that could be used in computer hard drives. The OSU chemists mixed manganese oxide, which is black in color, with a variety of chemicals. They then heated the mixture to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

After a failed test run, one of Subramanian’s graduate students removed the mixture from the furnace, only to find an impossibly blue powder.

“I expected [the resulting substance] to be brown or black,” Subramanian said in 2014. “But when I saw what he had, I knew this was something unusual.”

The chemists named the vibrantly pigmented powder YInMn blue after the chemical elements of which it is made: yttrium, indium and manganese, according to artnet News. They published their findings on the colorful discovery last year in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The pigment’s intense blue hue is a result of its unusual crystal structure, known to chemists as trigonal bipyramidal coordination. This structure allows the pigment’s manganese ions to absorb all red and green wavelengths of light, while reflecting back only blue wavelengths, according to an OSU press release.

And the spectacular color isn’t just a sight to behold.

The YInMn blue pigment also possesses unique characteristics which make it a coveted material for commercial companies and artists alike.

Art restorers, in particular, are interested in YInMn blue because the compounds that make up the vibrant pigment are so stable and durable, the color won’t fade, artnet News reported. What’s more, the pigment can be “tuned” to produce a wide range of blues, from sky blue to near black.

The pigment could also be used in roofing materials. Since YInMn blue reflects about 40 percent of infrared energy, it could keep buildings cooler. So it could reduce air conditioning costs.

A hallmark of the pigment is that it contains zero toxic ingredients, Subramanian says. That makes it a safer alternative to existing blue pigments, such as Prussian blue, which have toxic properties.

“Ever since the early Egyptians developed some of the first blue pigments, the pigment industry has been struggling to address problems with safety, toxicity and durability,” Subramanian said in a press release.

Since details of the pigment’s discovery were published last year, Subramanian has worked with paint manufacturers, conservation companies and chemical firms which make pigments for plastics, inks, cosmetics and coatings for cars and aircrafts.

And while practical applications for the pigment could make our world a greener place, our favorite uses of YInMn blue are accomplished with a paintbrush.

Subramanian has given samples of the pigment to several artists, allowing them to experiment creatively with the vibrant hue.

“It is a rare ‘Art Meet Science’ moment,” Subramanian said of the creative collaboration.

Below, check out the many shades of YInMn blue in artwork by OSU visual arts student Maddy Corbin and artist Rebecca Shapiro.

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The sister of the U.S. Ambassador killed during a terror attack while serving in Libya says that Congress’ continued interest in the 2012 incident is “purely for political reasons.”

“With the many issues in the current election, to use that incident—and to use Chris’s death as a political point—is not appropriate,” Anne Stevens, whose brother was Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, told The New Yorker in an interview published Wednesday. “I do not blame [then-Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton or [then-Secretary of Defense] Leon Panetta.”

“They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world,” she added. “And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had.”

Clinton’s response to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, which left Stevens and three other Americans dead, has for years been the target of criticism. That’s despite several Republican-led probes largely exonerating her.

House Republicans on Tuesday released the findings of their latest investigation of the attack. The report, which took a special committee two years and $7 million to complete, also didn’t blame Clinton — but some of her rivals can’t seem to let it go.

Stevens praised Clinton in response to the incident and noted that her brother had “a lot of respect” for the former Secretary of State. Read her full interview with The New Yorker here.

Her comments echo previous pleas from her family.

“It would really be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue,” Chris Stevens’ father, Jan, said in 2012 in response to then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. 

“I don’t think it’s productive to lay blame on people,” said his mother, Mary Commandy.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The idea behind tiny stick computers is very cool, the PC is small enough that you can carry it with you wherever you go and you can connect it directly to an HDMI port to turn any monitor into a PC. The drawback to that small size is that there isn’t a lot of space for ports and connectivity options. … Continue reading

If you’re a PlayStation 4 gamer that likes to broadcast your gameplay live on the Ustream service, you’ve got about one month to move your streaming to another platform. Sony has announced that the PS4 will be dropping support for Ustream on August 1st, meaning players won’t be able to stream to it, nor will they be able to find … Continue reading

We’re not sure what it is about gaming and beer, but both of them seem to go hand in hand. For example we’ve seen Call of Duty beer, Mortal Kombat beers, and Fallout beers, so it doesn’t really come as a surprise to find out that over in China, they’ve actually created beers based around Warcraft.

It seems that these beers are created by local beer company Tsingtao Beer and it was created in promotion of the movie. Is it surprising that it is only available in China at the moment? Not really, especially when you consider that the Warcraft movie is doing really, really well in China and the bulk of the revenue they’ve made is from the Chinese market.

In any case the bundle for the beer includes two cans: one for the Alliance, and one for the Horde, and it also appears that it comes with a keychain/can opener and a nice box. For those who don’t live in China, don’t worry you can still get your hands on it. There are some enterprising users who are selling the beers on eBay where they are priced between $20-30 depending on who you are buying it from.

We reckon this is more for collectors who are looking to collect merchandise related to the Warcraft universe, but if you love beer too, we suppose it’s a win-win situation.

They Are Selling Warcraft Beer In China , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.