THIS mind-blowing optical illusion of a famous landmark has left viewers baffled.
Can you figure out why the pictures next to each other are different?
1
Stunning optical illusion of world famous Leaning Tower of Pisa leaves viewers confused Credit: 2007 Kingdom, Yoonessi & Gheorghiu/Illusion of the Year Competition
Called the “Leaning Tower Illusion”, the images you see show one of the most famous historical monuments in the world: the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy.
The illusion’s name is a pun on ‘The Leaning Tower’, as first noted in a pair of identical images of the Italian monument. He also won the contest for the best illusion of the year in 2007.
When compared side by side, one of the images appears to be more skewed than the other, but they are actually identical images.
The illusion works not only for the Pisa building, but also for any receding tower images, as well as other receding objects. Yo
It’s actually better described as a visual illusion than an optical illusion, because the “trick” is in the mind, not the light, according to Scholarpedia.org
The reason for the illusion is a phenomenon in which an image of the tower viewed from below appears distorted when placed next to an identical copy of the tower itself.
If you were to cover one of the images and look at the other, both images are identical, tilted at the same angle.
In the case of this visual, the mind is tricked by its own mechanism to construct a three-dimensional mental image from a flat two-dimensional image.
Objects we see are reflected off the retina at the back of our eye, then encoded into electrical signals that are sent to the brain for further analysis.
As Scholarpedia explains, because our retinas are surfaces, the images thrown onto them are in perspective. The world is projected on the retina and information about the third dimension is lost.
The brain then reconstructs the third dimension from the image on the retina, allowing us to experience a believable three-dimensional world.
When two receding towers are in the same image, they appear to be getting closer, but when the image is placed next to each other, the mind sees them as different, as in the ‘Leaning Tower Illusion’.
We pay for your stories!
Do you have a story for The US Sun team?
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education