This year's best optical illusions

[n2doc]

A gravity-defying illusion has won the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Contest, held yesterday in Naples, Florida.

The visual trick involves a 3D construction of four slopes that appear to extend downwards away from a common centre (see video). When wooden balls are placed on the slopes, however, they bizarrely roll upwards as if a magnet is pulling them.

But the "Impossible Motion" illusion, created by Kokichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Kawasaki, Japan, is soon dispelled when it's viewed from a different perspective – each slope is actually sloping downwards towards a common centre.


A blurry heart seems to be more fickle than a heart in focus, at least when it comes to visual perception. Kohske Takahashi, Ryosuke Niimi and Katsumi Watanabe from the University of Tokyo in Japan found that by drawing figures with blurry edges, and using the colours red and blue, they could create shapes that seemed to pulse (see above). In comparison, a shape with defined edges doesn't have the same effect.

Kohske says that he noticed the illusion by chance in heat maps he was creating to visualise his research data. After surveying similar known illusions, his team discovered that theirs was novel.

Similar illusions are produced when an object's blurry contour doesn't provide enough detail about the edge of the figure: it gives our eyes an idea of its shape, proportion and orientation, but doesn't clearly define its boundary. A wobble is perceived as our brain tries to figure out where the shape ends and the background begins.



more, most are animations

http://www.newscientist.com/special/best-new-visual-illusions-2010

[liberal N proud]

1. It is amazing how ones eyes can be fooled.

[jberryhill]

2. Here's another great one

Some people look at this image and see a credible politician:

[deutsey]

3. Incredible, isn't it?

:rofl:

[Scuba]

4. It's not an optical illusion...

...but it looks like one !