SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
If you don't know how something works, break it. Science is built on creative destruction: Much of what neuroscientists know of the brain, they know from what gets lost during brain injuries. Under happier circumstances, they glimpse the functioning of visual perception from how it breaks down in optical illusions. For instance, the 3-D Escher-like illusions created by Kokichi Sugihara of Meiji University exploit our brain's tendency to see all angles as right angles.
Some of the most dramatic illusions involve apparent motion—these appear to spin, shimmer, or shimmy even though they're completely static, like Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie–Woogie or the psychedelic pinwheels of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a psychologist at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Two more Japanese mathematicians, Hitoshi Arai at the University of Tokyo and his wife, Shinobu Arai, have created a new class of them, known as fuyuu, or floating, illusions.
The Arais have an extensive online gallery with commentary in Japanese, as well as an abridged English version. In addition to their own creations, they have collected inadvertent illusions from the real world, such as buildings that, viewed from certain angles, appear to switch places because of how their windows and other design elements line up.
Don't believe everything you see
Source: http://nautil.us/blog/how-japanese-floating-illusions-reverse_engineer-what-we-see
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday June 23 2017, @12:09AM (2 children)
Just out of town, there is a field with an irrigation ditch running through. From the highway, it looks as though the water is flowing uphill, even in video.
I know it is an illusion, but, unfortunately, the property is posted, and so far, I haven't found anyone who can give me permission to enter and investigate.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @12:32AM (1 child)
I obviously don't know the ditch you are talking about, but I saw the same thing myself several years ago... there was a stream by a road which the water was flowing uphill.
It took me several minutes of looking and walking back and forth before I figured out the trick. The stream was flowing downhill (maybe at a 1 degree gradient), but the road was at a steeper incline (maybe a 3 degree gradient). The difference in gradient made it look like the water was going uphill, due to the "ground" falling away faster than the water. I expect your illusion is a similar trick.
I only mention this in case it satisfies your curiosity in the event that you are never able to investigate it yourself in person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @07:24AM
Maybe I'm being stupid, but I think a degree of variation can even be made up for by grass and weeds.