A MIND-BLOWING optical illusion has resurfaced on Reddit and it’s left users baffled.
The illusion looks pretty simple at first glance, it’s just made up of grey bricks and green lines.
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However, if you look closer, you’ll notice some of the lines seem to curve before returning to looking straight.
Viewers are challenged to point out the curved lines in the image, a task that is much more difficult than it sounds.
There seems to be no way to ‘solve’ the puzzle no matter how you look at it.
That’s because the illusion relies on a strategic placement of colors and shapes to trick your brain.
Scientists have previously explained that an illusion can occur when your brain guesses what’s going on in an image as you stare at just one part of it.
Illusion lover Michael Bach offered an explanation on his blog.
He wrote: “This brilliant design is from illustrator Lesha Porche (USA). When it appeared, it quickly made the rounds, and I thank Jeremy Hinton of “Lilac Chaser” fame to alert me.
“My explanation is as follows: “The tiles contain a low-resolution brightness curve, which is masked by all the borders.
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“It can be made more apparent by applying a little blur (4–5). The blur occurs automatically in our visual system, because –largely unnoticed– our visual resolution rapidly falls off from the center of gaze: at 10° eccentricity our visual acuity is 1/10th of the central one.
“However, the periphery does not “feel” blurred, does it? Its sharpness is “invented” by our visual system, just as our blind spots are “filled in”.
Bach’s theory suggests the lines in the illusion aren’t actually curved in the way your brain is telling you.
However, a popular comment on Reddit expresses another theory.
The comment explains: “In this image there are subtle lines in the grey squares, where the mini squares inside are smaller and more compacted.
“They’re coloured grey of course not green but your peripheral vision is not as good for green cones, so your brain fills in the lines on some of these irregular density lines.
“To see it stare at the centre and without moving your eyes try to visualise one of the curved lines in your peripheral vision… when you think you’re sure one exists, look closely at that area you will see subtle tenacity changes in the very small squares that follow the pattern of the line you saw.”
Lots of other Reddit users used the comment section to express their concern at being unable to figure out the illusion.
One joked: “I need new eyes after this”.
Another exclaimed: “I figured it out! There are no curved green lines, the patterns just have light spots that looks like curves!”
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