Do You See Marilyn Monroe or Albert Einstein in This Photo? An Amazing Eye Test Based on MIT Research

This visu­al curios­i­ty beats the black/gold dress craze of last month. The video above asks you to look at a pho­to and decide whether you see Albert Ein­stein or Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe — two 20th cen­tu­ry icons who look pret­ty much noth­ing alike. If you say Albert, your eyes are in good shape. If you say Mar­i­lyn, it’s appar­ent­ly time to pay a vis­it to the optometrist.

The sci­ence dis­cussed here is based on the research of Aude Oli­va, who works on Com­pu­ta­tion­al Per­cep­tion and Cog­ni­tion at MIT.  You can see the orig­i­nal “Marylin Ein­stein” hybrid image above, which Aude cre­at­ed for the March 31st 2007 issue of New Sci­en­tist mag­a­zine. More back­ground info on hybrid images can be found on this MIT page. Plus find a gallery of hybrid images here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

A Sneak Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List