The Green Dot

Things often get a little crazy around the holidaze, especially the last week before Christmas. In that spirit, and to start the week off on a lighter note, I offer yet another in a series of optical illusions I’ve posted over the years:

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you’re lucky! It’s amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don’t disappear. This should be proof enough, we don’t always see what we think we see.

green dot illusion

Thanks to Michael Bach for the image, and to Mark Levinson for the link and explanation quoted above. It’s worth noting that Bach’s site is the source of some of the other interesting illusions I’ve seen in the past; he has quite an extensive collection of such oddities.