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This video is about a multistable perceptual illusion, similar to the hollow face illusion, whereby maps or aerial or satellite photos look upside down/inside out, ie, concave (valley) parts look convex and convex (mountainous) parts look concave. Just flip the images around and things will make a lot more sense! It's just because our eyes gauge depth based on the location of shadows, and the sun always casts shadows on the bottoms of things.
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REFERENCES
Twitter posts:
https://twitter.com/Astro2fish/status...
https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer/sta...
Bad Astronomy Blog post: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bad...
Multistable perception http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multis...
Top-left Lighting http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-le...
Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in a minute!
Created by Henry Reich
The "Mountain Or Valley?" Illusion ─ minutephysics
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