Illusion

Image by Getty Images/FuturismF-F-FallingIf staring at this image down below (here's a big version) makes you feel like you're being swallowed by a black hole, you're not alone. According to a new paper in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, approximately 86 percent of people are likely to experience the same sensation.Optical illusions are nothing new, but most of them trick us into thinking that a static image itself is transforming in some way when it isn't. What sets this fascinating piece of brain chaos…

When you view the image above, does it look like black smear in the center is expanding? If it does, that means you're like most people – and your brain may even think that you're entering a tunnel, adjusting your eyes accordingly.As part of a recent study led by the University of Oslo's Prof. Bruno Laeng, a total of 50 adult test subjects with normal vision (31 female, 19 male) were asked to look at the newly developed "expanding hole" optical illusion.They viewed 26 versions of it, in different smear/dots color…

A new optical illusion can trick most of us into perceiving an expanding black hole, new research reports.The image is completely static, but researchers say it gives people "a growing sense of darkness, as if entering a space voided of light".  The illusory forward motion is probably our mind's way of preparing us for a change of scenery. By predicting a change from brightness to darkness, our visual system can adjust much faster to potentially perilous conditions, the researchers suggest."Just as glare can dazzle,…

The ‘expanding hole’ is an illusion new to science, strong enough to prompt the human eye pupils to dilate in anticipation of entering a dark space. Credit: Laeng, Nabil, and Kitaoka“Expanding hole” illusion deceives our pupils to expand in anticipation of expected decrease in light.An optical illusion, that is new to science, appears as an expanding hole to the vast majority of people, despite being a static image. This highly dynamic illusion is so effective at tricking our brain, that it causes a dilation reflex so…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Most employees in the U.S. with certain retirement accounts may be surprised when they open their next quarterly statements—and not just because of recent turmoil in financial markets, according to a paper from a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert on U.S. tax policy and retirement issues.…

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has spotted an alien on the Red Planet, as per rounds of speculation on the social media. The rumours started when a blog writer suggested he spotted a man hanging out on Mars, casually lying down on the Martian surface amid giant rocks, in an image sent originally by the NASA rover last year. Many people then reacted to the blog, suggesting that this proves signs of life on Mars. But the “alien” almost certainly is a rock, as claimed by a report.Scott C Waring, writing in the UFO Sightings…