I have to imagine everyone has seen it by now, the dress that appears to be blue/black to certain people and gold/brown to others, well it seems it has to do to what kind of light you are most used to:
That Dress riddle: trick of the light?
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/news/that-dress-riddle-trick-of-the-light-1.1858842
Now, three scientific studies, including one from the University of Bradford, have explained why. Scientists say the conflict is due to the mechanism the brain uses to ensure an object is seen to be the same colour, no matter what time of day or type of light it is bathed in. In bright, midday sun, daylight is blueish and so the brain subtracts blue light. In artificial light, it gets rid of yellows – and in both cases an object should appear the same.
Crucially, the mechanism relies on other nearby colours, such as reds and greens, to judge how much blue or yellow to remove. In the case of the dress, these reference colours were missing. Blue is also particularly tricky for the brain to deal with.
Neuroscientist Bevil Conway, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, who asked more than 1,400 people about the dress, says it is likely those who spend a lot of time outdoors, or had just been in daylight, took away too much blue and saw it as white, while those more used to artificial light subtracted yellows and perceived it as blue.
I like to be outdoors (though my job has me sitting at a desk all day, and I admit I spend a lot of time on the couch in front of the TV) and when I drive home each afternoon I deliberately do not use sun glasses so I can get exposure to the light. Perhaps that is why I am in the gold/brown camp.
