Trippy illusion will trick your mind into seeing a ‘rapidly expanding black hole’

Illusions are known for how they confuse your mind during a sensory experience and now a new trippy image will take you to another universe with its ‘expanding black hole’

The illusion seriously tricks your mind as it convinces you into thinking that a dark “black hole” at the centre of the image is rapidly expanding, as if you were moving towards it.

Researchers have studied the illusion and suspect that it tricks an observer’s brain into thinking that they are moving into a darkened space, like a cave, tunnel or even a black hole, reports livescience.com.

The illusion contains a large black oval shape surrounded by a dark halo on a white background filled with smaller black ellipses.

As an observer stares at the optical illusion, the dark oval shape will typically expand outward for a couple of seconds, gaining the nickname of the ‘expanding black hole’.

In the study, which was originally published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers found that 86% of the 50 participants who looked at the mind-boggling image reported seeing the expanding darkness.

The team suspects that the illusion plays on the brain’s perception of changing light levels.

Lead researcher Bruno Laeng, a psychologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, explained in a statement that “the expanding hole is a highly dramatic illusion” and added that it tricks the mind to make it believe there has been a change of brightness “as if the observer were heading forward into a hole or tunnel”.

The group found that the image hijacks a natural reaction in the brain which predicts when light is about to change, triggering the pupils to contract or dilate for an upcoming disruption.

This is the same sensation that humans have when walking into a dark space.

While carrying out the study, researchers used special cameras to track eye movement as an observer looked at the illusion.

They found that their subjects’ pupils were expanding as they took in the illusion, much like how the image seems to expand.

Mr Laeng explained: “The illusion of the expanding hole prompts a corresponding dilation of the pupil, as it would happen if darkness really increased.

“The pupil reacts to how we perceive light, even if this light is imaginary.”

During the study, the scientists also exposed the observers to altered versions of the illusion where the color of the dark oval had been changed.

They found that the illusion’s expanding effect was reduced and the observer’s pupil dilations were less noticeable when the oval was a different colour.

However, when they placed white ellipses on a black background to trick observers, their pupils contracted instead of expanding, as if they were moving toward a bright light.

It is currently unknown why some people who look at the expanding hole are unable to see the dark space moving and researchers hope to test the illusion on animals to solve the mystery.