The rock band Soulwax created an album with a nice optical illusion for its cover. You will have a move and squint your eyes a little to fully perceive the effect.

Source: Neatorama.

Where are the shadows? Where is the sun? This simple optical illusion could let you think that MC Escher did not survived to 2008.

Source: Dump Trumpet.

Do you see me?

I see you.

Look closely. The word LIFE is not as slanted as you’d think at first.

If you read “I love Paris in the springtime”, read again.

On the one side “Teach”, on the other “Learn”. Is it all simply an illusion? Ask teachers and students.

Will you be able to read the text? Maybe you do not have perfectly good eyes and you should blink a little.

Source: Photo.net.

V838 Monoceroti Expansion (Hubble)

It wasn’t anything interesting until it happened but the star V838 Monoceroti, which had simply sat in obscurity, flared up in 2002 to become 600,000 more luminous than our own Sun. It didn’t take long for the star to fade back into the darkness but the Hubble Space Telescope managed to get quite a few pictures of it during its active phase.

In this series of images you can see how the star’s outer layers were first expelled and then cut away by the powerful radiation from the star. The event was made even more interesting by the fact that a “light echo” was seen. During the expansion the object appeared to expand faster than the speed of light – the effect was however merely an astronomical optical illusion.

Other strange things in space

The 10 Strangest (Real) Things in Space (at Orbiting Frog).

Let’s forget optical illusions for a moment. I’d like to dream. But illusions come back immediately, thanks to Eugen Erhan.

Put some fluorescent dye in water, let water droplets go and synchronize a stroboscopic light. You can get anyhting you want and it looks like magic.

One very cool optical illusion of a fade to black… and white.

And there’s another one very similar but with a different image: a waterfall.

Graphic artist and painter MC Escher produced a few very interesting paintings and engravings. But today, I give you the opportunity to see it differently. Bring on the video!

Source: Magic Design.

In the year 1956, “the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher made an unusual lithograph with the title ‘Print Gallery’. It shows a young man viewing a print in an exhibition gallery. Amongst the buildings depicted on the print, he sees paradoxically the very same gallery that he is standing in.”

The term was coined by the poet and columnist Nico Scheepmaker at the end of the 1970s. It is named after Droste, a Dutch brand of cocoa, whose box has a picture of a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate and a box of the same brand of cocoa.

You will find the following image and much more at AlgebraOfLife.

Straight lines are actually really parallels.

It’s your brain trying to convince you they’re not.