This is not an animation...

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

... but is an optical illusion.

Enjoy!

http://thechive.com/2012/01/26/your-mind-officially-blown-26-photos/mind-blown0/

[Bluenose]

Umm, I saw some blue dots on an orange field.  The dots have black & white borders.  No movement, not rotations, completely static.
Mind you, I often fail to see common optical illusions and I have never been anle to see those 3D images that were all the rage a few years ago.

What was I supposed to see?  

[pieces o nine]

If the colors selected are opposites on the color wheel and very close in intensity, juxtaposed shapes to appear to vibrate for many people's perception.


In images like the one Bob posted, the outer set of circles (against the more orange background) appears to move as a group slowly to the right if you look first at the center area; the center group (against the more yellow background) then appears to move slowly to the left if you switch your focus to the outer frame, because it was moving just a moment ago.  Switching focus between center and an edge can keep the image crawling slowly, indefinitely.

[Swatopluk]

I can see only the inner circles moving to the top left, the outer ones are static.

[Sibling DavidH]

Parts of it seem to wriggle a bit until I look hard, then it's static.  Must be my upbringing.

[Aggie]

Try shifting your gaze repeatedly from the outer to the inner circles; if you keep your eyes steady, it seems to be less effective.

Here's one more (click for fullscreen - more effective IMHO):

[Swatopluk]

I remember that one

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Umm, I saw some blue dots on an orange field.  The dots have black & white borders.  No movement, not rotations, completely static.
Mind you, I often fail to see common optical illusions and I have never been anle to see those 3D images that were all the rage a few years ago.

What was I supposed to see?  

A couple of things to try: (not all at once, mind)

Take off your glasses (if you wear them), or put them on if you don't normally use  them for computers.
Close one or the other eye.
Enlarge the picture to fill your screen completely.
Sit closer or farther away from your screen.
Try looking slightly to the left or the right of the image, such that the image itself is in your peripheral vision.

And last but not least:

Stare at it unblinking for 30 seconds, trying to concentrate on one spot, the idea is to fatigue your retina (which is rather easy to do-- remember those persistence of vision tests?) and trigger your eye's normal shift-left-right response.  Once your eye begins it's rapid-left-right-left pattern, this can bring on the image's appearing to shift.

What many folk do not realize is that our eyes fatigue quickly, and need a split second to recover-- what's happening is the chemicals that make the rods/cones work get partially depleted (as I recall) and so the eye naturally shifts a millimeter to the left or right (depending), allowing a slightly different section of rods/cones to come into focus.  This lets the other section recover.  Then the eye sifts slightly back exposing the recovered section to the focal point, allowing recovery of the alternate section.

There was a cool experiment from the 60's where scientists used tiny little lenses attached to the eye that moved back-and-forth with the eye, presenting the same image in the same spot regardless of the eye's movement.  Eventually the eye quit reporting anything-- fatigue.  (or so I recall-- the details are fuzzy, but I remember the picture of the little apparatus).

*whew*  Talk about off-topic....