The Dress That Sent The Internet Into Meltdown

The dress that caused all the controversy.

Chances are, you had several arguments with your colleagues over the colour of this dress yesterday.

The seemingly innocent design sent the internet into complete meltdown as people argued over whether the dress was in fact blue and black or white and gold. 15,000 tweets per minute were sent on Twitter as people put forward their case for each colour:

Today, several theories are being bandied about as to why so many of us are seeing things so differently. While most of the population will see the dress as a variation of white and gold, around 25% will view it as blue and black.

Apparently, it's all to do with the shape of our retinas and how we interpret colour.

"Most people will see the blue on the white background as blue," said Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. "But on the black background some might see it as white." He even speculated, perhaps jokingly, that the white-gold prejudice favors the idea of seeing the dress under strong daylight. "I bet night owls are more likely to see it as blue-black," Conway says.

Other theories included big events colouring our view of the world, as user BradTheLadLong wrote: "Scientists have proven that when there is a big event in your life that is having a negative effect on you, your sighting of the colors may vary and that is why some people are seeing black and blue," he said.

Regardless of why you see it, we have only one thing to say: the dress is clearly black and blue. Don't you agree?

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