Are the dots moving straight or wriggling? Scientists are left baffled by mind-bending animated optical illusion

Are the dots moving straight or wriggling? Click on this to see: Scientists are left baffled by mind-bending animated optical illusion

• When dots move straight across the screen without colliding, the mind sees them as if they are wriggling around randomly
• But they appear steady if the dots are allowed to cross with one another
• Illusion is more obvious when there is a large number of dots

By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD

PUBLISHED: 12:07, 14 November 2013 | UPDATED: 12:21, 14 November 2013

Focus on the red cross while the dots are moving around. 

You're probably seeing the dots wriggling around in different directions.

But in reality they’re moving in straight trajectories without ever colliding. 

 

The dots in this animation are moving in random directions in straight trajectories without colliding. By focusing on the red cross the dots seem to be wriggling around

Source: Gizmodo

To convince your brain, focus on one dot without looking at the red cross and you will see it moving in a straight line.

Scientists at Keio University in Japan found that if white circles on a black field are moved in straight lines and allowed to cross, they appear to move in straight lines.

But if those lines avoided intersections, the dots appear to wriggle around instead.

 

In this animation dots are moving in random directions in straight trajectories, and the dots are allowed to collide with each other. When they collide, the wriggling illusion disappears

The researchers dicovered that the illusion was more obvious when there were a large number of dots on the screen.

‘The illusion was independent of the distance covered and the observer's eye movements as well as the dot types,’ they wrote in the Journal of Vision.

There is currently no explanation about why the mind sees the illusion in this way.

Another unexplained illusion is the 'grid' first first reported by German physiologist Ludimar Hermann in 1870, and simply involves a white grid on a black background. 

As you move your eyes around the image, dark dots quickly appear and disappear at the intersections. However, whenever you look directly on any intersection, the dark dots vanish

As you move your eyes around the image, dark dots quickly appear and disappear at the intersections. 

However, whenever you look directly on any intersection, the dark dots vanish. 

For years it was widely believed that the illusion worked because of 'lateral inhibition' - the term used to describe the complex way in which the cells on the back of the retina respond to areas of black and white. 

A few years ago this explanation was shown to be completely untrue, and so the explanation for the illusion remains a mystery.

Read more:

• Newly discovered optical illusion will screw up your mind

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507097/Are-dots-moving-straight-wriggling-Click-Scientists-left-baffled-mind-bending-animated-optical-illusion.html#ixzz2kfADB1Nl
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The British X-Files: Natural History Museum sets up unit to investigate bizarre phenomenon such as Somerset's 'space slime'

• Strange substance found in nature reserve thought to be linked to meteor
• Jelly investigated at museum's Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity
• Experts tasked with identifying unexplained items including 'dragon skulls'

By LUCY CROSSLEY

PUBLISHED: 12:21, 21 October 2013 | UPDATED: 12:21, 21 October 2013

The secrets of the universe, including the origins of a mysterious 'space slime' are slowly being unravelled by a unit of museum experts dubbed the 'British X-Files'.

Carrying out work which would leave even the cult television show's Fox Mulder and Dana Scully baffled, the team at the Natural History Museum have been tasked with identifying a host of bizarre items discovered by the British public.

Among the finds examined by the museum's Identification and Advisory Service was a mysterious slime discovered in a peaceful nature reserve in Somerset.

Mysterious: The 'space slime', discovered at a nature reserve in Somerset has left scientists baffled

Secrets of the universe: The strange gloop, found at the Ham Wall nature reserve, mysteriously appeared around the same time as a meteor crashed to earth in Chelyabinsk, Russia

The strange gloop, found at the Ham Wall nature reserve, mysteriously appeared around the same time as a meteor crashed to earth in Chelyabinsk, Russia, and an amateur photographer claimed he had captured a mysterious object whizzing through the sky above the park on camera.

The object appeared to be a meteor, although this was not confirmed by astronomers.

Nature buffs claimed the slime was merely frogspawn, while others said it was 'star jelly', a strange substance said to appear when meteors fall to earth, which has continued to stump scientists.

The London museum's Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity, which houses the Identification and Advisory Service, was tasked with investigating the mysterious slime, with the aim of establishing whether it had fallen from space, or if its origins were rather more terrestrial. 

Laboratory tests have so far failed to find just what it could be - and where it had come from.

Discovery: The Natural History Museum's Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity is tasked with identifying unknown objects, such as this rock which a member of the public mistook for a dinosaur skull

Agent Skull-y: The pelvis bones of sea birds, such as auks and puffins, were thought by their imaginative discoverers to be dragon skulls

The tooth is out there: A deer skull was mistaken for that on an ice-age sabre tooth cat because of its long tusks

Scientists from the unit extracted DNA from the jelly and tried to match it against that of birds and frogs, without success.

DNA traces of worms and bacteria were found in the substance, but these were not thought to have been the source of the slim, and had more likely come from organisms which colonised the matter.

Chesca Rogers, from the AMC, has been working on the mysterious substance since it was sent to
the unit by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which runs the nature reserve where it was found in February.

'The slime is still a genuine mystery,' Ms Rogers told The Daily Telegraph.

'There are stories in folklore that link it with meteor sightings. Some people think it might be unfertilised frog spawn, others think it is a fungus, or a slime mould or that it is plant related.

'None of the tests we have done so far have told us anything conclusive, but the samples we got were not in the best condition and highly contaminated.'

Ms Rogers is set to open up her very own X-Files this Friday at a museum talk where she will explain how she has been unravelling the mystery, as well as other examples of the AMC's most intriguing and puzzling cases.

Revealing: The secrets of the AMC will be revealed at a talk at the Natural History Museum this week

Mystery: The origins of the 'space slime' might even have left Mulder and Scully from cult television programme The X-Files stumped

However, some of the mysteries of finds brought to the AMC by eagle-eyed members of the public have proved easier to solve.

The haul has included stones they believe to be the remains of a dinosaur and 'meteorites' that are in fact discarded aluminium foil.

A skull believed to have belonged to an ice-age sabre tooth cat, its fur still intact, was instead found to be that of a Chinese Water Deer, thought to have been mistaken for the ancient predator because of its long tusks which could have been mistaken for powerful teeth.

Other animal remains have been mistaken for something even more incredible, such as the pelvis bones of sea birds, such as auks and puffins, which were thought by their imaginative discoverers to be dragon skulls. 

In one case, which initially appeared to be one for agents Mulder and Scully, an 'alien' in a jar of liquid was brought in, only to be revealed as a science fiction toy.

Read more:

• The truth is out there: Britain's answer to the X-Files - Telegraph

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2470015/The-British-X-Files-Natural-History-Museum-sets-unit-investigate-bizarre-phenomenon-Somersets-space-slime.html#ixzz2iM8GPtDy
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