Take a look at the video below and you MIGHT see a square traveling left to right, changing color as it goes.
But what if you discovered the moving square actually stays the same color the whole time? That’s right, once again our eyes are deceiving us with another optical illusion.
A moving square appears to change in color, though the color is constant. pic.twitter.com/phzLNgfIZy
— Akiyoshi Kitaoka (@AkiyoshiKitaoka) August 14, 2018
My Modern Met explains how our eyes are tricked:
When we are trying to pick out an individual object, while processing all this information, our brain may discount some of the factors in order to allow our eyes to perceive the object. “A gray surface in sunlight may have much higher luminance than it has in the shade, but it still looks gray.
The good professor who created that optical illlusion video above also created the nifty eye-bender below. Watch as you scroll down. It looks like the yellow bars are animated — but they are not! It’s just an illusion:
Yellowish bars appear to move laterally. pic.twitter.com/9nzSrL4XPF
— Akiyoshi Kitaoka (@AkiyoshiKitaoka) August 23, 2018
Enjoy one more “lightness illusion” before you go. This one blew a gasket on my old noggin and forced me to do a double-take Look below. You MIGHT think you see bluish spirals and greenish spirals. Nope. They are both the same color:
There appear to be bluish spirals and greenish ones, though they are the same color. pic.twitter.com/b1oeioojhc
— Akiyoshi Kitaoka (@AkiyoshiKitaoka) August 21, 2018