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optical illusion

Pop Culture

Bizarre optical illusion has people either seeing a car door or the beach

What do you see?

Photos combined from Pixabay.

Car door and the beach.

Ancient sage Obi-Wan Kenobi once remarked, "Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them." Well, he's right, kinda.

Our eyes bring in information and it's our brain's job to decipher the image and determine what we're seeing. But our brains aren't always correct. In fact, sometimes they can be so wrong we wonder if we are accurately interpreting reality at all.

After all, our brain can only label things if it knows that they are. If you lived on a deserted island your whole life and a cow showed up on the beach, you'd have no idea what to label it.

The latest baffling image that's making people across the internet doubt their senses is a picture tweeted out by Twitter user nayem. "If you can see a beach, ocean sky, rocks and stars then you are an artist," the comment reads.

But some people who see it also think it looks like a car door. What do you see?

beach, car door, rusty door

Beach or a rusty door?

via nxyxm / Twitter

If your brain told you the picture is of a lovely evening laying on the beach then you're definitely an optimist. But, according to the person who posted it, the photo is of the bottom of a rusted out car door. Not very romantic, is it?

art, comedy, sense of humor

The tweet has since gone viral, earning over 5,000 likes.

via nxym /Twitter

Here's what Twitter users thought about the illusion.

twitter trolls, twitter responses, twitter fights

Yum.

via Twitter.

This guy must be hungry.

viral images, social media, common questions

A clever call back.

via Twitter.

This guy is having flashbacks to 2015.

sense of humor, learning skills, spacial relationships

Knowing the difference through skills.

via Twitter.

Your perception determines your reality.

artist, imagination, speculation

Drawing skills.

via Twitter.

This guy explains it perfectly.

creative thoughts, community, Twitter chat

Boat on the beach.

via Twitter.

This guy has a great imagination.


This article originally appeared on 8.16.21

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Optical illusion makes looking at Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' a truly 'moving' experience

This is so trippy.

@Alex_Verbeek/Twitter, "Van Gogh's Starry Night" by Christopher S. Penn is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Watch "The Starry Night" come to life with this optical illusion.

Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" is one of the most recognizable and beloved paintings in the world. It was completed in 1889 and has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941. It is not up for sale, but if it were to go to auction there is a chance it could fetch as much as billion dollars.

Such a priceless work of art is perhaps a strange object for a parlor trick, but trust me when I tell you this one is worth it.

Whether they are oases in the desert created by heat shimmer, an elephant with an indeterminate number of legs or straight lines that look crooked, optical illusions can throw our brains for a loop. They can also be super fun, and an optical illusion that makes the "Starry Night" painting turn into a moving picture is most definitely fun.

The illusion, shared by Alex Verbeek on Twitter, involves two steps. First, you stare at the center of a spinning spiral image for 20 seconds, then you look at the painting. Staring at the spinning spiral isn't as easy as it sounds—it makes your eyes buggy and your brain hurt a little—but even if you don't do the full 20 seconds, you can probably get the effect.

Aim for staring at the center of the spiral for at least 10 seconds, then watch "The Starry Night" come to life before your eyes. (You have to click "play" first, by the way. The spirals need to be swirling.)

Want a larger version of the painting to try it out on? Here you go:

Van Gogh Starry Night

Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" (1889)

"Van Gogh's Starry Night" by Christopher S. Penn is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The effect doesn't last long, but phew. Our brains are so bizarre.

According to a 2009 study by Japanese researchers, motion in optical illusions is still processed in the brain the same way real motion is. So don't be surprised if the moving painting makes you feel a bit woozy, if you're prone to motion sickness.

It's hard to believe that Van Gogh's "Starry Night" could be improved upon, but here we are. Definitely a "moving" experience to share with your friends.

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People are losing their minds over this circle-filled optical illusion

Yes, there really are circles there.

@DrGBuckingham/Twitter

The coffer iIllusion appears to be nothing but right angles, but there really are circles in there.

Optical illusions are always fun to play with, but some can be particularly challenging on the old eyes and brain. It's fascinating to see how different people process them and how quickly or slowly—or sometimes not at all—people see things that aren't really there or see images hidden within other images.

Not to brag, but I'm kind of an optical illusion savant. It usually doesn't take me longer than a few seconds to see whatever it is people say they are seeing. But occasionally an illusion comes along that stumps me to the point where I wonder if people are actually lying about what they are seeing.

This rectangle/circle illusion is one of those.

It's called the coffer illusion and was created by Stanford University psychologist and vision scientist Anthony Norcia. The image is made up of a pattern of black, white and gray lines of various shades that create the illusion of rectangles. It's easy enough to see the rectangles.

What's not so easy to see are the 16 circles in the image. Yes, they really are there.

Take a look:

Seriously, at first my brain said, "Nope." How could there be circles? All I see are straight lines. Straight lines horizontally. Straight lines vertically. Not a single curved line anywhere in sight. How can there be circles if there are nothing but right angles in the image?

So I did what any self-respecting social-media-savvy person would do and started scrolling the comments to see if anyone explained how they saw circles.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead if you're still trying to see the circles on your own.)

One way to see the circles is to focus on the vertical bars between the rectangles. For some, that makes the circles suddenly pop off the screen.

For people who need more of a visual clue, someone broke it down with colored shapes, literally circling one of the circles.

Once you see them, it's pretty easy to switch back and forth, but hoo boy, does it take a while to actually see them the first time.

Why is that?

According to an explanation from a professor and student from the University of Sydney, the reason we have a hard time seeing the circles at first is because of our brain's strong tendency to identify objects in what we're seeing. The lines come together to form edges, contours and shapes, and our brains fill in the objects.

"For most people, the grouping into rectangles initially dominates," the authors write. "This may be because rectangles (including the ones we see in door panels) are often more common than circles in our daily environment, and so the brain favours the grouping that delivers rectangular shapes."

I figure it's also likely due to the rectangles looking more 3D (therefore like a real object) while the circles appear as 2D.

Aren't our brains amazing?

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How many of your friends can see all the dots in this optical illusion? Probably none.

Your brain literally won't let you win against this optical illusion:

There are 12 black dots in the picture, but I'd bet good money that you'll never be able to see all of them at once. If I squint, I can get four, and only four.

The illusion started taking over the internet after game developer Will Kerslake shared it via Twitter, but the picture itself originally came from the Facebook page of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a psychology professor in Kyoto, Japan. It appears to be a variation of Ninio's extinction illusion, which is a grid illusion that scientists use to explain a big scientific concept.

Why you can't see all 12 dots? Basically, we can blame evolution.

The back of our eyes are full of light-sensing nerve cells, all crowded together, waiting for stimulation. You might think that when something interesting happens, they'd all start shouting and firing off signals — a furious rush of noise. But that's not what happens.

Instead, excited nerve cells actually kind of "shush" their neighbor cells, a phenomenon called lateral inhibition. They do this because it helps the message get through — if only a few people are shouting, the signal is clearer.

The end result is that our visual contrast goes up, but at the cost of muting whatever we're not looking at.

Meanwhile, our brain tries to be helpful by filling in that incomplete information with whatever it guesses is there. And since most of this picture is grey lines, our brain just leaves out the black dots.

So you're not going crazy, I promise. There really are 12 dots, but our eyes and brains do weird stuff sometimes to help us focus and survive. And as for what it means if you can see more dots than someone else? Well, the science doesn't really tell us much. Maybe you just have a different level of lateral inhibition than them, or maybe your brain is better at filling in the gaps.

Little mind games like this remind us of the limits of our brains.

We often assume seeing is believing, but optical illusions help show that's not true. Scientists are now using optical illusions to study how we perceive the world, why we react to certain things, and why we make quick assumptions. Optical illusions can teach us about bigger subjects like schizophrenia or even racism!

And, if nothing else, they're kind of trippy and fun.

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