So I`m sure some of you have seen the ever trending picture of this dress that is causing people a lot of confusion. Here it is:
(https://40.media.tumblr.com/a391a1b4b46dd6b498d379e50f96ecbc/tumblr_nkcjuq8Tdr1tnacy1o1_500.jpg)
The original
(http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Untitled-12.jpg)
The left image is color toned to show the dress as gold and white, the very left shows it as dark blue and black. The center is the original picture. So which is it? Sit there and look at it and for some it could be either, or it might appear as one and change to the other.
The actual color?:
(https://localtvwghp.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-26-at-8-47-11-pm.jpg)
Blue and black. But how? Some people just can`t see it this way. Well there is a science behind this. An article on Wired written by Adam Rogers explains that, “Light enters the eye through the lens—different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you’re looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the “real” color of the object. “Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance,” says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. “But I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.” (Neitz sees white-and-gold.)
Usually that system works just fine. This image, though, hits some kind of perceptual boundary. That might be because of how people are wired. Human beings evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes color. That chromatic axis varies from the pinkish red of dawn, up through the blue-white of noontime, and then back down to reddish twilight. “What’s happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you’re trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis,” says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. “So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black.” (Conway sees blue and orange, somehow.)”
Whether you see one or the other, this picture is still pretty wonky.