Unsettling Elon Musk optical illusion reveals how easily our brains can be fooled

THIS bizarre optical illusion is sure to make you look twice.

Upon first glance, you might not spot what’s wrong with the upsidedown image of billionaire Telsa founder Elon Musk.

Can you spot what’s wrong with this upsidedown image of Elon Musk?

However, on closer inspection, you’ll notice that his facial features aren’t quite right.

Flip the image upside down and you’ll spot that the South African’s eyes and mouth are actually the right way up.

The brain is not able to spot the small changes when the figure in it is upsidedown but notices right away once it’s flipped 180-degrees.

It’s an illusion that has been around since 1980 when a scientist created what’s thought to be the first iteration.

It was shown in a paper by Peter Thompson, of York University, and featured a doctored image of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The snap of her face was flipped 180-degrees while her eyes and mouth were inverted.

Upsidedown she looked normal, while when upright she looked grotesque.

As a result, the illusion is sometimes called the Thatcher Effect.

Plenty of similar images have cropped up in the decades since, each revealing a lot about the way that the brain processes images.

Faces seem unique to us even though they’re all pretty similar, and that’s to do with our cognitive processes.

It’s thought that we develop specific processes to differentiate between faces that rely on the configuration of features – such as the eyes, nose and mouth – as the details of the facial features themselves.

As such, we are able to recognise someone’s face when it’s upsidedown even if their eyes and nose have been flipped.

There is evidence that rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees experience the Thatcher effect.

This suggests that our ability to process faces evolved in a common ancestor some 30 million years ago.

To try it for yourself, a website, thatchereffect.com, allows you to give it a go with famous faces – or your own.

Another upside-down-Musk illusion showcases the same effect. Left shows the doctored image one way up, and right shows it flipped 180 degrees

In other news, a four-tonne chunk of a SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the Moon, according to online space junk trackers.

Boeing has sunk $450million into a flying taxi startup that hopes to whisk passengers across cities by the end of the decade.

Personalised smart guns, which can be fired only by verified users, may finally become available to U.S. consumers this year.

And, scientists are embarking on a mission to unravel the mystery behind dozens of grisly child mummies buried in an underground tomb in Sicily.

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk