The bizarre ‘impossible’ illusion is driving fans insane – can your eyes outwit them?

A fan of OPTICAL Illusions has revealed a clever trick that will really mess up your brain.

The eye-teaser looks simple on the surface until it starts moving.

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It shows two rectangles – one is yellow and the other is blue.

You move slowly across a black and white vertically striped screen.

It seems that you always come out on top, but apparently that’s not the case at all.

If you wait to the end, the background will turn gray, showing that they are indeed moving at the same time the whole time.

So why does it seem like one is always ahead of the other?

Cliff Pickover, who shared the illusion on Twitter, linked to a scientific paper that apparently explains it.

“Illusions show that contrast affects apparent speed,” the study says.

It’s officially known as the Stepping Feet Illusion.

And it basically comes down to a change in contrast that occurs between the black and white stripes.

As Marco Bertamini’s book Programming Visual Illusions for Everyone explains: “A dark object has high contrast with the white stripe and low contrast with the black stripe.

“With a light object, the opposite is the case.

“As a result, a constant-velocity motion can appear to speed up and slow down.”

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