The fuel pumps may appear to change colors, but there are just five different hues.
This mind-blowing optical illusion was created using the Munker-White concept, which places lines in the background to trick your brain.
Human vision does not just consider the colors of objects, but also the colors surrounding the object.
By changing the stripes’ colors across the fuel pumps, our brain also changes our perception of each pump.
How many colors do you see in this optical illusion? The pumps stay the same colors throughout the rows, but the lines trick your brain into thinking the colors have changed
The image was made by iCompario, which stated: ‘Although it looks like there are a variety of different colored fuel pumps, surprisingly there are only five different colored fuel pumps, each row is exactly the same.’
When you take a closer look, colored lines run across the fuel pumps, which can trick your brain into seeing different hues of color.
The color of the fuel pumps is perceived to depend on the color used on the lines around the image.
‘For example, a red line gives the fuel pump a different perceived color. This can lead our brain to perceive some fascinating color changes, which are not there.’
The illusion is weaker when you zoom in, but when you zoom out, the contrast between the colors can be noticed more – and it may differ per person.
According to optical illusion expert Michael Bach, the Munker-White illusion ‘shows how much the neighborhood influences the perception of color.’
In addition to being generally fascinating, the illusion highlights how our senses often are insufficient when determining the truth.
The Munker-White concept was used to create another optical illusion in 2019, which shows seemingly different-colored spheres floating amid streaks of red, blue, and green lines.
The Munker-White concept was used to create another optical illusion in 2019, which shows seemingly different-colored spheres floating amid streaks of red, blue, and green lines
The orbs, which initially appear to be various colors, are all the same color
The orbs, which initially appear to be various colors, are all the same color, according to David Novick, a professor at the University of Texas in El Paso, who created the optical illusion.
‘A three-color confetti illusion with spheres, which appear to be yellowish, reddish, and purpleish but in fact have exactly the same light-brown base color (RGB 255,188,144),’ Novick shared in the tweet.
As shown in an image of the spheres sitting in front of the colored lines instead of behind them, each of the circles -the same one in the previous image – is actually a pale pink, despite what our eyes had initially reported to our brains.
To make the nature of the image even more elusive, the colors of the orbs tend to switch depending on which area of the image one focuses their eyes on.
By diverting your eyes and returning them, a clearly ‘blue’ sphere might appear green.
According to an analysis by science writer Phil Plait for SyFy Wire, the illusion, like all other optical illusions, underscores a disconnect between the raw data and the information – data put into context – processed by our brain.
