Is the black hole in this optical illusion expanding?

Netizens were intrigued by a viral optical illusion designed to make it look like an expanding black hole.

The viral optical illusion is interesting as it tricks the mind about the size of the hole as much as the viewer stares at it. The black hole on the canvas does not move at first. However, it enlarges after being stared upon.

A study published the psychologists from the University of Oslo in Norway and Ritsumeikan University in Japan stated that 86 per cent of the test subjects agreed that the black hole gets bigger.

The psychologists claimed that viewers think that the expanding black hole makes the human think that they are seeing the future. The experts added it shows only 100 milliseconds of their ‘future’. It happens because of a small brief in processing information from the human eye to higher areas of the brain.

“The circular smear or shadow gradient of the central black hole evokes a marked impression of optic flow as if the observer were heading forward into a hole or tunnel,” the researchers said.

“The visual neural compensation network predicts how the stimulus would change in the next moment and generates an illusory ‘outward expansion’ of the central ‘hole’ region,” they added.