Observe the patterns below, and you may find them somehow relaxing. Even though posing as static images, they manage to give you that motion feeling, making our head hurt and eyes spin. Which one was your favorite? I like the one including Volkswagen Beetles, but I believe we had that one already.

In which direction does it spin?

Shown optical illusion just laid there on my hard disk for years. When I opened it today, I couldn’t remember why I placed it in my illusions folder in the first place? After some puzzling, finally I managed to see its visual phenomenon!

Ok, here’s what I want you to do: concentrate on the animated .gif on your right. You’ll quickly realize it represents some sort of see-through sphere, constructed of many dots rotating in one direction. Dots in front make the front face of the sphere, while “background” dots belong to sphere’s back. It’s logical they rotate in opposite directions. Now try and switch those background dots with front-face ones. Notice any change?

If you manage to visualize this, your able to change the direction in which sphere rotates. With some practice, you’ll be able to switch the direction back and forth in very short time fragments. Don’t underestimate yourselves – many individuals have difficulty seeing this type of illusions. It’s not that they’re less worthy, it’s just that their brain operates differently… Which reminded me – did you know that more than 1/3 of all people who went to see Avatar in 3D couldn’t see the image in 3D?

There are many optical illusions of this type available; one of the more popular being Spinning Dancer Optical Illusion. Your best shot of finding more, would be browsing through our Animations category.

Contrast Wave Optical Illusion

I’ve posted an interesting animation below, one that loops indefinitely between two simmilar pictures. Before you start, I’d like you to wait few seconds before the animation loops to it’s start. You’ll know it when you see left image blurred, and the right one in high contrast.

Ok, once you’re set gaze for a few seconds at the fixation cross in the center of the two neighboring images. After 10 seconds two new halves will appear, and I want you to judge the contrast of these halves.

What did just happen? At first, the difference between two halves was more than obvious – one was blurry, and the other one sharp. After the change, on the left part you initially perceived high contrast, and on the right noticeably less contrast. The right one became somehow darker, am I right? This effect persists only for a few seconds. After a while (moving your eyes around the picture should help) it becomes apparent that the 2 new halves are both identical. All of this has something to do with Contrast adaptation and Contrast gain control, but let’s leave this to someone more qualified – I’m sure there are many of you out there smarter than me. Don’t hesitate to share your explanation!

In order to understand this, watch the video below

An interesting video has spread across internet recently. It became so viral, that I’ve received it from many different sources in a way of submission. I’m still not sure why I’m so judgmental against posting YouTube clips to this site, but when something cool as this hits my Inbox, it would be shame to ignore it. After viewing the video below, some of our old timers will quickly remember Magic Moving Pictures article posted almost 3 years ago. This example is rather new, yet the procedure is 100% identical. Have any of your tried making this on your own? I have many more interesting video illusions in my mailbox, so expect to see them posted throughout the end of the coming week.

Want to hear a fun story? I finally decided to finish one of my courses I’ve registered for all the way back in 2005. So I sat and studied it for a few days, gone through dozen of past exams, and when I finally felt ready – I went for it and signed up for the exam. Boy, was I surprised when my professor gave me the paper. It was as if you studied math, and got an exam in physics. I asked him is this some kind of a mistake? Are you sure you didn’t you give me the wrong exam? I didn’t recognize a single question! When I explained to him I attend this University since 2002 (what can I say, after starting my company I somehow neglected college) – all made sense. It turned out the course itself changed so much over the years, and now includes algorithms and technologies, ones that weren’t available back then when I first signed for that particular course. All my work went down the drain…

Even though the animation below doesn’t need to be impossible at all, I decided to share it with you cause of it’s awesomeness. I want to say clearly, I’m aware we can’t show 4th dimension in our 3-dimensional space, but this is the closest I can explain 4th dimension to you in plain words:

Imagine you lived in a 1-dimensional space, and wanted to steal money from me. You could only move forward and backward on a straight line. Preventing you to steal from my safe would easily be done, just by placing a single dot (barrier) on the line between you and my safe.

In a 2D environment, imagine you lived in old Nintendo’s Super Mario world, and could move in all directions, except further and closer from the monitor’s surface. What is in front and behind the monitor would be unimaginable to you. Preventing you to steal from my safe would easily be done just by drawing a rectangle around my safe. Diverting over the rectangle would be impossible for you, since you couldn’t comprehend the 3rd dimension.

Now the person from 3rd dimension would easily pick up the content from the rectangle, leaving no damage to the rectangle barrier, since he wouldn’t even need to touch it. In a 3 dimensional world (our own), I would prevent you from stealing my safe, by placing it in a sealed box. You couldn’t open it from each of the 6 sides. But if an intruder came to my house, from a 4th dimension… now this is the tricky part to understand…. he would easily take the content out of the safe, without even needing to open it, nor would he touch it. Thus, resulting in undamaged safe, and missing content inside of it.

If you’re interested more in calculating the 4th dimension space, here is a good starting point.

"Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry

Probably all of you saw this picture at some point of your life. Titled the “Afghan Girl”, this photo was named the most recognized photograph in the history of National Geographic. Although girl’s name was not known, her picture appeared on the June 1985 cover of the magazine. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in early 2002.

Over time, many variations of Steve McCurry’s original photo appeared. At some point even in optical illusion form, as we see below. All I could find about this illusion, is that people can’t seem to look at it for too long. Apparently you get a headache, or become nervous at best. Maybe this isn’t the true nature of this illusion, but it just didn’t make me hallucinate like some other animations did. Wait few seconds for the animation to load (it’s 1MB big), and share your experience afterward.

Open this picture in full-size, then scroll it up and down!

Akiyoshi Kitaoka is a Professor of Psychology at Ritsumeikan University, Japan. He has specialized himself in visual perception, and visual illusions of geometrical shapes, brightness, color, in motion illusions and other visual phenomena. Akiyoshi became most renowned through his Rotating snakes illusion, which many of you have seen already. Btw, Rotating Snakes illusion currently holds 4th position in our “Top 10 Illusions of all time” gallery.

Recently, Akiyoshi updated some of his most popular illusion with additional “Plastic” layer – which resulted in drastic improvement of the optical illusion effect they hold. Check out both of the thumbnails included in this post, and don’t forget to open them in full-size to see the illusion better!

View in full size to see the complete effect!

Before I log out, I’d like to thank those of you that helped me with some great tips about NYC. We’ll definitely go and see some Broadway musicals, and I’ll be sure to get my tickets at TKTZ stands like Crystal Xizzle recommended. Seeing a Naked-Cowboy is a must, and don’t worry Maria – all those museums will be checked :) Thehpdrifter don’t be surprised if I contact you, to show us some nice Jazz clubs, etc… ;) Any other suggestions? Are there any regular stand-up shows held at the Seinfeld-type-of-bars? Where is the best place to get some NBA or MLB tickets? Looking forward to hear your comments!

P.S. – When you open the gallery of this post, there is another hidden gem inside! Let’s see how many of you find it…