Is that realistic? Do ants see us like that?
In: Physics
if you ever see a C-5 galaxy take off it looks like it’s going so slow that it will never get off the ground, but it’s actually going like 130-150 mph.
There is a phenomenon called speed-size illusion where your brain assumes larger things are moving slower even if they are actually going the same speed as a smaller object and they’ve proven it has something to do with your retina and how the information is processed.
EDIT: They still are unsure of the science behind the why but they took real world factors like perceived distance and all of that out of the equation in an experiment because they can play a huge factor. They put 2 different sized dots moving across a black screen at varying speeds simultaneously and asked observers to tell them which one was moving faster. Even without any other visual context, your brain assigns a slower speed to the larger object (the one that occupies more space on your retina)
The prevailing theory is pretty simple. All else equal, huge things tend to move slower in the real world than their smaller equivalent. Thus, our brains have learned from context that big things must be slower. What’s interesting about the experiment I mentioned is that they showed that you could train this out of an observer by basically showing them large objects moving fast.
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