Best Illusion You Will See Today

Let me show you something that one of my colleagues has just discovered recently. If you concentrate on the black spot in the continuous animation below, the moving stripe will turn BLUE!

I’m not sure how this illusion works, but I bet it has something to do with our peripheral vision. Some of my friends even reported that they saw the stripe turn GREEN, so it may differ from individual to individual. I think this is the finest illusion you’ll come across today. I believe that in it’s nature, this illusion works on the same principle Disappearing Dots do. Stay tuned for more!

49 Replies to “Best Illusion You Will See Today”

  1. I think it is more closely related to staring at an image where the colors are reversed then look at a blank wall and the after-image is correctly colored. If you watch the image long enough then look to a blank wall you will see a blue rectangle.

  2. For me, it is a turquoise color, which is a blue-green. Some people may call it blue, some may call it green. I think it is more closely related to the false color illusions than the disappearing dots.

  3. This illusion is based on the after image concept. The grey line is being replaced by the negative of the yellow (thus the blue) as you concentrate on the black dot. The speed at which the line changes is important too so your eye will retain the after image color. If the viewer sees the yellow as more red (orange) the strip might appear green.

  4. I am not an expert here but even though it is in our peripheral vision, I think it also has to do with our eyes perceiving the opposite color (black/white, green/red etc.) in this case being the opposite of the orange which would be a blue/green. When the grey bar covers the orange, our eyes get the opposite color burning (?)

  5. I loaded the image into photoshop and inverted the colors, and the orange became the same shade of blue that the bar was turning when I looked at the dot. That’s got to be it. Same as those “look at the center for 30 seconds then look away” illusions.

  6. I think I can explain the illusion, but I’m not a good English speaker so…
    I remember an illusion where you look to a negative picture for a while, then you look to the same picture, but in black and white. The result is that you’ll see an image in color, because your brain will make you see the negative, the oposite color of the ones you were seeing. The oposite of orange is blue.

    Yes, different people see different colors, it’s called daltonism >:°D

  7. the rods and cones of the eye receptors either contract or raise so that we can see a specific colour so that when there is rapid movement the eye hasn’t had time to react and so the complementary colour to the one shown will appear ghosted over the grey area. the further away from the center of the field of vision the more pronounced it is ( might have something to do with the fact the light has to travel a little further)

  8. What’s so Odd is that peripheral vision is largely done with “rods” which are black and white receptors, so you really only see mostly B& W in the periphery. your brain is able to interpret what little color is seen out in periphery as color. The only cones located in the periphery are blue cones. They probably interpret the orange part as “not blue”,,so the grey part becomes blue.

  9. I am a color blind and i am not sure which color the strip appears to good to me. \m/.
    But a inference can be made: the color of a body depends on its velocity? is it?

  10. I’d say it’s more to do with persistence – the same effect as when you stare at something, then look at a white panel, and see a negative.
    Because the area the line moves around is orange, when the grey gets substituted you see the negative of orange which is blue-green. Since the grey line keeps moving, it’s pretty well always over an area that your eye has previously seen as orange so the effect keeps getting refreshed.

  11. Complementary colours: stare at any shape in a solid colour for a while and close your eyes: you see the shape in its complementary colour.

    By watching the dot, you fix your eyes in one place. the stripe moves, or rather a rectangle of orange in replaced by one of grey. You see the complementary colour of the orange rectangle that was there.

  12. You know how when you look at a colourful picture long enough you will then see the inverted colours everywhere you look?

    It’s used in the trick with looking at a picture with inverted colours for a couple of seconds then looking at the same picture but in B&W.

    It doesn’t matter where you look as long as you will focus your eyes at one point (the dot only helps with that). The opposite of orange is blue and when the colour disappears and what is left is a grey background then you see blue.

  13. It has more to do with contrasts, try to stare at a big bright yellow square and you will start seeing purple. The primary contrast of orange is a place between purple and green, in this particular shade of orange it’s a shade of blue. If you try replacing that bright orange color with any other bright color you will also see the primary contrast of said color appearing as the grey bar.

    See the color wheel for a bit of reference.

  14. I think it is related to the illusion with the celebrities looking ugly when you stare between them. Your eye averages out the images and colors. just a guess.

  15. The cause of this is the same as most colour changing type illusions. Our brain is trying to “calm” the image in the peripheral. We start to see the opposite colour of the back ground in the moving neutral grey bar. Since the background is orange, the bar should appear blue (blue and orange are opposite on the colour wheel). If the background was Green, we would see the bar as red; if it were purple it would appear yellow, etc.

  16. Last night I was watching Nik Wallenda walk across the Grand Canyon (yeah, yeah I know wasn’t exactly the Grand Canyon)… and he kept saying afterword that his bigest problem was the optical illusion made from the swinging pendelum and the solid stone wall in front of him. So I was wondering is there an illusion out there that would show us what he was seeing (preferabbly without having to walk the tightrope across the grand canyon)?

    Thougt this might be a good place to ask this and fun to see what you all come up with!

  17. Yes, it appears somewhat blue or similar coloured , but it has nothing to do with the black dot, you see anywhere else than the animating stripe, it will appear blue like

  18. It has to do with retinal fatigue. The grey stripe will turn blue even if you stare directly at it, it just takes longer because you have more cones directly at the center of your vision.

  19. The way this works is called retinal fatigue
    the retinal(s) that let you see the grey get “overworked” because the grey stripes are appear and leave to quickly this is why you see blue there are other similar tests

  20. You say some of your friends saw green, and a few people here have said turquoise — I’ll bet this has more to do with monitor calibration than difference in colour perception.

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