Pattern detection
- Random dots - lines
- Constellations
- Mars vegetation
Let’s just focus on his canals and green patches of vegetation. Percival was the unwitting victim of two well-known optical illusions. First, in almost all circumstances, the brain attempts to create visual order where there is no order at all. The constellations in the sky are prime examples—the result of imaginative, sleepy people asserting order on a random assortment of stars. Likewise, Lowell’s brain interpreted uncorrelated surface and atmospheric features on Mars as large-scale patterns. The second illusion is that gray, when viewed next to yellow-red, appears green-blue
Link to original
Color