#illusion

Geisterhafte Illusion in Australien: Forscher lüften Geheimnis des Phantom-Leuchtturms

Auf einer Insel am Great Barrier Reef erscheint nachts ein Leuchtturm am Horizont, den es gar nicht gibt. Forscher haben rekonstruiert, wie das Gehirn den Geisterschein erzeugt.

Spektrum · DE

Zöllner Illusion

What: The Zöllner Illusion (pronounced TSOLL-ner, or just “zollner” if you’re not feeling fancy) is one of those delightfully old illusions that still gets me every time. It was discovered way back in 1860 by Johann Zöllner, a German astrophysicist who was probably just trying to look at fabric patterns and got thoroughly distracted [1]. Once you start playing around with the controls, the effect will be pretty clear… and it’s at least a little bit more fun to me knowing that the diagonal lines are causing my brain to glitch out.

Optical Toys · EN

Watercolor Illusion

What: The Watercolor Illusion is one of those gorgeous ones where your brain is just… painting things that aren’t there. The thing about this thats beautiful, is that it’s easily paintable (water colors obviously) with your own watercolors, on physical paper. You should effectively be able to look at this illusion and figure it out (it seems to work for me in greys/blacks/whites so its color blind-independent?) … the lines drawing the shapes have a subtle shading to them in one direction, not too dissimilar to water color painting.

Optical Toys · EN

Müller-Lyer Illusion

What: The Müller-Lyer illusion (pronounced roughly MEW-ler LEER) is one of the absolute classics, you’ve probably seen it in a textbook at some point. Two lines, exactly the same length, one with arrowheads pointing out and one with tails pointing in… and the one with the tails looks noticeably longer. Here they’re animated, so the fins swing back and forth and you can watch the lines seemingly grow and shrink, even though they never change at all.

Optical Toys · EN