Can someone explain physics behind this phenomenon

Greetings ATS, hope your minds are sharp as always as I'm looking for an explanation.

I have always been fascinated with this phenomenon, but could not find any info on it or how it works.

Experiment:

Focus your vision, say in this case, on white text on your ATS page. Then slowly move your finger (doesn't matter in which direction, the finger needs to cross your vision's point of interest), right in front of your eyes, with your vision staying focused on the white text. What you should see is that text starts to bend and stretch on the edges of the finger.

Now, I won't say what we see is actually bending of space-time, since it's impossible (or is it?), but it looks strikingly similar, and that's why I find it interesting.

Hopefully this is understandable, any inputs are welcomed.
Thank you

My finger just gets transparent.

So i must be gifted with Xray vision

Can't believe i actually tried this

Originally posted by Mianeye
My finger just gets transparent.

So i must be gifted with Xray vision

Can't believe i actually tried this

You see, it's not useless, you found out your eyes has X-ray capabilities
It's something with optics and I'm eager to find out what it is...

Two eyes competing to create a coherent image

i think this site explains it...
subliminalmanipulation.blogspot.com...

take the 'blind spot test' they have here, it's trippy!



edit to add..

Before we go on you need to understand the special interrelationship between the brain and the eyes.
Let's take an example of the blind spot.
All vertebrates have the retina — a light-sensitive layer at the back of the eyeball which receives images and transmits them to the brain as nerve impulses.
At one location, where the optic nerve connects the eyeball, there are no photoreceptors and hence the brain gets no input signal from there.

reply to post by zilebeliveunknown


I believe it has to do with the finger's occultation of only one eye's image. When I place my finger close enough the the text to be seen by both eyes, the effect vanishes.

Since we perceive distance spatially, from our binary vision, what I believe is happening is that our brain tries to compensate for the loss of depth information and renders the mental image to try and maintain the correct position of the object that we are concentrating on. Note that you don't have an image of the finger that is close to your eye as your brain knows that it is unimportant and "paints it out".

I would imagine that the loss of depth perception information would kick off a number of physiological and mental processes to compensate and correct. An example may be an attempt to refocus the eye that is not receiving the image that is the point of focus. In this instance, an unfocussed peripheral image of the target scene may appear to be at the wrong depth to later processing and therefore the image in our brain is 'morphed' to provide a composite. This would have the effect that the optical image would actually be unchanged as to the positioning of each item, but the depth of the items in the image are changing as your finger moves across your view. This was what I observed.

reply to post by zilebeliveunknown


Its all about light and focus. For instance, take a lamp and hold a stick close to a surface. The shadow will have distinct edges. As you move the stick closer to the light, the edges will blur. This is because some light is diffusing around the bottom of the stick. the stick itself my even appear invisible at a certain point.

The same effect happens in this situation. some light "leaks" around your finger because your eye is out of focus; the light is diffused inside your lens. Since your brain is constantly correcting for distances based on information like focus and trigonometric relationships of you eyes, the distance perception becomes distorted and curvy looking.

Try looking into optics and focus. Also, try it with a digital camera, you can set the depth of field and focus in such a way that objects that are close to the lens and out of focus they look invisible.

Correct me if im wrong!

Originally posted by zilebeliveunknown
What you should see is that text starts to bend and stretch on the edges of the finger.

Diffraction.
See this article here for more detail.

This experiment shows the effect with two fingers, but diffraction also works on the edge of any object.

reply to post by tinhattribunal

Quite an interesting illusions mate, I heard some nature's predators using blind spots of their preys as advantage to sneak up on them.
Also, I read somewhere, some martial arts techniques learning how to use blind spots of the opponents.

You might be noticing Parallax. This should explain it:

en.wikipedia.org...

i forgot the question.
i dont like startrek.

Thank you all mates for your useful thorough explanations coming directly from cutting edge critical minds

@alfa1 is there something you're not familiar with? Thanks mate, one mistery solved, infinite to follows

reply to post by Rikku

NM