These boxes aren't rotating. It's an optical illusion. Really.


On Twitter, @jagarikin posted this fantastic example of the "reverse phi illusion." Press play above. The boxes aren't actually rotating. I promise. From SoraNews24:

In very simplified terms, when our eyes see sudden transitions from either light to dark or dark to light, our brains perceive it as motion happening. Take yet another look at @jagarikin's GIF, and you'll notice that the edges of the cubes' blue frames have a sliver of color to them. Sometimes they're white, sometimes they're gray, and sometimes they're black, and as they're cycling from one to the next, the video's background is doing the same thing, and the result is the illusionary "rotation" of the cubes.


For more on the reverse phi illusion: "An optical illusion called 'reverse-phi motion' helps explain how we view moving objects, Stanford scientists find"