00:00Wow, something bizarre is about to go down.
00:03Focus on this cross right here.
00:05Ignore the wild celebrity roulette spinning around the edges.
00:09And whatever you do, don't blink.
00:11Just keep staring at the cross in the middle.
00:14Now tell me, do you notice how our favorite stunning celebrities
00:17are starting to look like something out of a monster movie?
00:21No special effects are happening here.
00:23Trust me, all of this is purely in your mind.
00:26So when you're presented with a series of eye-aligned photos,
00:30one after the other, your brain kind of glitches,
00:33mixing them up and making them look distorted.
00:36Before you know it, even the most flawless features of Hollywood's Barbie and Ken,
00:41I mean Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling,
00:43begin to look twisted, squashed, or stretched.
00:46Ooh, the chills!
00:47Here we have an animation of four faces flipping between Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato.
00:53But are you ready for a spin?
00:55These faces will keep switching back and forth between the two of them,
00:59but now they'll also be spinning in a circle.
01:02Fix your gaze on this cross and resist the urge to look away.
01:06If you stay focused right on the center,
01:09you'll find it almost impossible to spot the morphing between their faces.
01:13The transition seems delayed, like it's barely happening.
01:17But the moment we stop the spinning motion,
01:19BAM!
01:20It's pretty clear that the morphing animation was happening the whole time at the same speed.
01:27Meet the rotating rays illusion.
01:29If you're seeing what I'm seeing,
01:31the outer ring looks like it's moving clockwise,
01:34while the inner ring seems to spin counterclockwise.
01:37But what's strange about it is that these circles aren't moving at all.
01:42Our eye movements play a huge role in creating this effect.
01:45I mean, when you keep shifting your gaze around the image,
01:48the illusion of motion continues.
01:50But can we make things more interesting
01:53by placing a picture of Kim Kardashian right in the center?
01:56Focus just on her face and try your best not to blink.
02:00Notice how the ring seemed to slow down or even stop?
02:04Bizarre, huh?
02:05This illusion was created by a Japanese professor
02:08known for designing tons of mind-bending illusions.
02:12Like this one,
02:13where it looks like rollers with blue dots are turning towards each other.
02:16Or this one,
02:17where yellow rings seem to move up and down,
02:20almost as if they're getting closer together.
02:22But again, these aren't animations or GIFs.
02:26The motion is only happening in your mind.
02:31The painting The Scream is scary on its own.
02:34But one optical illusion can make it even weirder,
02:38practically bringing it to life.
02:40If we throw in a little zooming in-and-out motion
02:43to Munch's iconic work,
02:45the haunting face seems to grow and shrink,
02:48almost as if it's jumping out at you.
02:50It makes the scream feel all too real, right?
02:53Now, of course, this after-effect illusion isn't just for paintings.
02:57We can do the same with a photo from Rihanna's concert.
03:00Fix your gaze on the middle of the image,
03:02and you'll start to see her move,
03:05almost like you're getting a front-row seat to a live performance.
03:08All right, maybe it's not quite as cool as seeing Rihanna actually perform,
03:12but it's still pretty awesome.
03:15Next, we have this pretty ordinary checkerboard image.
03:18But I'll ask you to pay special attention to the squares
03:22marked with the letters A and B.
03:24So, are they the same color or different?
03:27Most people confidently say that square A is darker and B is lighter.
03:32But what's bizarre about it is that they are actually the same exact shade of gray.
03:37Ooh, one of 50 shades of gray?
03:40Heh, sorry, I couldn't help it.
03:42Anyway, how does this magic happen?
03:44Well, the square labeled B is sitting in the shadow of that cylinder.
03:48Your brain automatically thinks,
03:50hey, shadows make things darker.
03:52So, it brightens square B to adjust for the shadow,
03:56while square A, which is outside of the shadow, is left as it is.
04:02Let's talk about the paperclip illusion.
04:05If you take a simple grid and add perfectly straight diagonal lines,
04:09something strange happens.
04:11They look bent or kinked.
04:12It's called the paperclip illusion,
04:15because some people think that the lines resemble a row of paperclips.
04:18Can't see it?
04:19Well, there is a way to fix that.
04:21If you look at the image from the corner of your eye,
04:24the effect gets stronger.
04:26So, let's put a photo of Timothee Chalamet in the corner.
04:29Fix your gaze on him,
04:31and in your peripheral vision,
04:33you'll notice those straight lines now seem bent,
04:36like a bunch of paperclips floating around.
04:38Can you see it now?
04:40Another interesting thing is that the effect changes
04:42if you adjust the thickness of the lines.
04:45Make them thicker,
04:46and instead of paperclips,
04:47the illusion shifts to something that looks like chains.
04:50But if we do the opposite,
04:52making the lines thinner,
04:53they'll look more like wavy ribbons.
04:56Here we have photos of two pairs of crocs.
04:59And we can all agree that this one is pink,
05:02and this one is green, right?
05:03Awesome!
05:04But let's make it a bit harder with this new picture.
05:07So, what color are these crocs?
05:10Take a good look and tell me.
05:12Which option do you think you just saw?
05:14Ah, number one, number two, or number three?
05:18Got your answer?
05:20If you guessed option one, you are correct.
05:23These crocs are actually pink,
05:25but they look gray because there's a green filter over the image.
05:29The lighting tricks our eyes into seeing colors differently.
05:32White things, like these socks, turn green,
05:35while pink things, like these crocs, turn a kind of gray.
05:38This color constancy illusion proves just how much lighting can deceive our brains.
05:45There was one more pink illusion for you.
05:48This time, we have an image with a white circle in the middle.
05:51But now, let's add some motion to it.
05:54I know this animation is intense,
05:56but keeps staring at the black X in the center.
05:59Suddenly, that white circle seems to take on a soft pink hue.
06:03It's almost as if the red and white pixels around it are blending together.
06:06A similar thing happens with this red and white checkerboard.
06:10Keep focusing on the black X again right in the center.
06:13And will you notice that when the checkerboard suddenly changes to all white,
06:17the red spaces still might look faintly pink?
06:21One explanation is that when you stare at the X,
06:24your eyes get used to seeing the red and white edges.
06:27This adaptation effect leaves an afterimage in your vision.
06:31And your brain holds onto the red so strongly
06:33that when it's removed, it fills in the white with a touch of pink.
06:40Now, for our final trick, we have an illusion called the Poggendorf triangles.
06:45What do you see when you look at this weird shape?
06:48So, you might see it as two triangles put together.
06:51One here and the other one here, right?
06:53That makes sense.
06:54But that is not the correct answer.
06:57I mean, yeah, there are in fact two triangles in this image,
07:00but not in those positions.
07:01What's happening is that your brain probably thinks
07:04there's an imaginary diagonal line running through them.
07:08Like those two edges are connected in part of a single line.
07:11But the truth is that those edges don't connect at all.
07:15See?
07:15There are actually two distinct lines that don't line up.
07:19Like I said earlier, there are indeed two triangles in this image.
07:23Just not in the way we expect.
07:25Let's separate these shapes and...
07:27Wow, there they are!
07:28This illusion works because when we see objects that are partly hidden,
07:33our brains sort of create imaginary outlines to make things seem more logical.
07:38But those outlines aren't actually there.
07:41The same happens here.
07:43Your brain thinks this image is just bizarre,
07:45then tries to figure it out by filling in the empty spaces in the middle.
07:49So, you end up seeing the gray areas as part of a single translucent rectangle,
07:54which definitely doesn't exist.
07:56Crazy, huh?
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