All These Balls Are the Same Color (Optical Illusion)

Yes! It's time to remember cursed dresses, strawberries that aren't red, strange lines and disappearing dots. Some optical illusions melt brains, and the one you're about to see definitely sits a level above. Developed by professor David Novick of the University of Texas at El Paso, this optical illusion features twelve spheres: 4 red, 4 green, and 4 blue... or maybe not. If you get close enough, you'll discover that all spheres share the same base of brown. What's going on?

Optical illusions can go viral in minutes, divide the entire Web, sow chaos in forums and social media threads. They challenge us at every turn, and bring out the best/worst in each of us. Although we have a basic understanding of how optical illusions work, the truth is that the eye-brain system always manages to surprise us.

Today it's the turn of twelve spheres, accompanied by colored lines following the classic RGB pattern. At first glance, we see four red spheres, four blue, and four green. However, that information is false. Professor David Novick of the University of Texas at El Paso warns us that in reality, all spheres use the same light brown tone, with RGB code 255/188/144.

Alright... again: The spheres are all the same. Copy the image and paste it into your favorite editor. If you zoom out, you'll notice the illusion becomes stronger, but with a zoom of 200-250 percent it starts to disappear. The difference is that some spheres are "cut" only by red lines, others by green lines, and the rest by blue lines. If we somehow remove those cuts...

… the illusion disappears. What's the official explanation? Our brains process colors individually, but also within the context of nearby colors. If we manipulate that context in a certain way (in this case, with the colored lines that cut through the spheres), we start to detect a color transfer that in practice never happens. Its official name? The "Munker-White illusion".

This spiral belongs to Akiyoshi Kitaoka from Ritsumeikan University, the same one behind strawberries that aren't red and disappearing dots. Now, how many colors can you see in it? The most common answer is pink, green, cyan/light blue, and orange lines... but there's a problem: The cyan isn't cyan, but green.

Source: David Novick on Twitter