A NAUSEATING optical illusion that’s fittingly been dubbed ‘Chunder Thunder’ has been confusing viewers as it appears to bring a stationary painting to life.
The brain tricking image was a finalist in the 2019 Illusion of the Year competition.
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The illusion is made up of a few stationary imagesCredit: Neural Correlate Society
The illusion’s description on the competition website explains: “In this illusion, the 17th Dutch marine artist Ludolf Bakhuizen’s painting “Ships on a Stormy Sea” is seemingly bought to life.
“The ship appears to be tossed around on a raging sea in a wild storm where the waves surge past and the clouds scud across the sky.
“With the hatches battened down, the crew are experiencing a roller coaster ride! However, this impression of wild motion is illusory.”
It was developed by Mike Pickard and Gurpreet Singh from the University of Sunderland in the UK.
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The images have been edited so when they are shown after one another they appear to moveCredit: Neural Correlate Society
To create the illusion, the researchers created other images of the painting that had all the elements moved forward by a tiny amount.
However, that by itself would have only created a flicker and not movement.
This meant they also had to add dark and light flashes to make the boat appear to violently move back and forth in the sea.
The researchers said: “The directional motion seen in this illusion is achieved using positive and negative images and different luminance levels.
“Visually, this favours the forward motions seen so that an overall impression of continuous motion is created.”
The founders of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest have also brought out a book called Champions of Illusion, which is also about the science behind mind-boggling images.
The science behind optical illusions
This brief explanation may help to unscramble your brain…
- Optical illusions make a little bit more sense when you learn that our eyes have very little to do with what we see and it is our brains that play the key role in creating images and trying to protect us from the potential threats around us
- Our brain is constantly trying to make sense of the world at the quickest pace it can despite the world being in 3D and the images on our retinas being in 2D
- It can be really difficult for your brain to interpret everything at once so it will often take shortcuts and give you a simplified version of what you see so you can have quicker reaction times if the object you’re looking at looks dangerous
- When you look at an object what you’re really seeing is the light that bounced off of it and entered your eye, which is converted into electrical impulses that your brain then turns into an image
- Our brains can warp straight lines if an object in the middle of them looks like it’s drawing closer as it wants to emphasize the potential threat
- Different colours and light and dark can make the same sized objects look different or make patterned images look like they’re spinning
If you were amazed by this then these mind-frazzling optical illusions may ‘break your brain’ with trippy moving shapes.
This brain frying optical illusion will leave you wondering what you are seeing.
And, this one tricks you into seeing a brunette woman on the wall.
Are you amazed by the storm-battered ship illusion? Let us know in the comments…
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Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education