A fantastic, natural, optical illusion is being hailed as a glitch in the matrix. As drivers make their way down a tree-lined avenue, a mill at the end of the road appears to be shrinking as it is approached, rather than getting larger.
The mill sits far from the road, but is perfectly framed by the avenue of trees and the direct line of the road. However, as the footage shows, at the top of the road, it appears to be huge and dominating the horizon.
But, as it’s approached, the mill slowly starts to shrink. Eventually, the huge building is reduced to nothing but a small distant mill on the opposite side of a river. The optical illusion has gotten viewers baffled, and it’s become somewhat of a viral sensation. Many cannot understand how something can be seen to be getting further away the closer one drives towards it.
Mysterious Matrix Mill
After hearing about the shrinking mill, one curious driver decided to check it out herself. Her footage has blown up online, and the illusion is clear to see. As she approached the mill, it did indeed shrink to nothing.
“After driving the road multiple times, I had to record it,” Shannon Brown told Viralhog. “The building at the end of the road in the video appears to be shrinking as we get closer. Our brains would think it would get bigger, or not be able to see it at all, because of the distance of the building across the water. This is still a mind trick to me, but it’s an amazing one at that!”
The shrinking mill can be found in Gravelly Bay in Port Colborne, Ontario. The road in question is called Lakeshore Road, for anyone looking to witness the phenomenon themselves.
Of course, an egghead has solved the mystery. The shrinking mill is simply an optical illusion created by our brains, induced by the correlation between the trees, the road, and the perspective of the mill. The effect is known as the Ponzo illusion. It is caused by multiple converging lines, tricking the brain into odd perspectives