Is it white and gold? Or is it black and blue? (picture below) 

 

In a Wired article it explains the phenomenon:

 

"Light enters the eye through the lens—different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you’re looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the “real” color of the object. “Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance,” says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. “But I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.” (Neitz sees white-and-gold.)

 

Usually that system works just fine. This image, though, hits some kind of perceptual boundary. That might be because of how people are wired. Human beings evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes color. That chromatic axis varies from the pinkish red of dawn, up through the blue-white of noontime, and then back down to reddish twilight. “What’s happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you’re trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis,” says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. “So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black.” (Conway sees blue and orange, somehow.)"

 

The dress is apparently black and blue although, I'm very reluctant to write this as a fact, because I see it as white and gold. 

 

 

 

So, in a Buzzfeed poll people are saying White and Gold...

 

 

 

 

Tweets about the dress are trending worldwide.

 

Do I care about the colour of the dress? N O O o o o o ? ? . . . .

— Mike (@MichaeIR) February 27, 2015

 

The internet has become a place where we discuss and trend what the colour of a dress is What's next?

— Sebastian Olzanski (@SEBTSB) February 27, 2015

 

this dress colour is giving me more stress than my exams do..

— ?????????????????₆⁶₆ (@opnsouls) February 27, 2015

 

And of course, what would the internet be without THIS reaction to the dress

 

What colour is this dress? pic.twitter.com/y2CUImUiw6

— Little Sea (@LittleSea) February 27, 2015