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This new optical illusion is driving the internet crazy: these two images are perfectly identical!

Two images side by side. They are exactly the same, but however, they appear to have been taken from different angles. This is the new optical illusion doing the tour of the web, driving people crazy!

Sometimes our brains seem to complicate things all on their own. If certain optical illusions obviously play tricks on us, this one at first glance does not seem too complicated. After all, it is just two photos, which are exactly the same, placed side by side. However, this doesn’t stop many people from insisting that each image was taken from a different angle.

In fact, the slope of the road on the right may appear different, suggesting that the angle of the shot wasn’t exactly the same in both photographs. However, in order to set things straight: it is in fact the same photo, which has simply been duplicated. It is therefore not the same scene taken from a different angle.

According to The Independent, this optical illusion is due to a phenomenon that was explained in 2007, called the ‘Leaning Tower illusion‘ effect. In fact, when we carry out the same experiment using the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, putting two copies the same photo beside each other, we obtain the same illusion, and it appears that one is leaning more than the other.

This is explained by the fact that our brain treats the information as one single image, interpreting it as a 3D scene, and it ‘corrects’ the perspective to make sure that one of the two roads slopes more than the other. And given that the system isn’t perfect, when the two identical images are presented, the brain hits a glitch and misinterprets them. Our brain is simply playing tricks on us, rest assured that it is in fact the same photo!