The photo (on the right) shows an illuminated optical disk and a raised wing of a turntable. The lamps are not visible, because they are very bright and illuminate the camera. I don’t have light filters, but I tried to take a picture through a polaroid filter, remembering from school optics, that the light reflected from something is always polarized! But in vain. The polarizer did not have any brightness-reducing effect. Perhaps because the disk reflects light differently than an ordinary mirror. I tried it through the mirror. A little better, the light spots of the lamps are visible, but still very vague.(On the left)

More precisely, it is not an OPTICAL phenomenon, but a neurophysiological one, an optical illusion that has just been observed in a large number of experiments on myself.

There is an ionizer outside the window of my bedroom and working room too, which I kept in the room for a long time and realized that it interferes with the operation of the computer and other electronic devices, and collects a lot of dust. I moved it to the balcony-loggia. Sometimes I looked at his turntable, “but does it turn anyway?”

Yes! It’s spinning!

But the strange thing is, when I look away from the computer screen and glance at the turntable, it rotates slower for the first two or three seconds than it does after that time. Accelerates its rotation! At first, I thought about humidity fluctuations, which also affect the speed of rotation, but I quickly realized that this was NOT a REAL PHYSICAL EFFECT, but only my optical illusion! I have conducted several dozen such tests of switching vision from the screen to the turntable and back. The “deceleration-acceleration” effect is stable.

Assumption: The screen flashes at a high frequency, but we don’t notice it (like in a movie or in front of an old cathode ray kinescope.)

But current screens, liquid crystal or LED, are unlikely to flash with a “cinematic frequency.”

Then what OTHER reason could there be for this optical-visual illusion?

I noticed that not only when looking at the screen, but also when it was “detached” from the keyboard. So it’s probably the LED lighting bulbs that flash at a frequency of 120 times per second. Our Consciousness “does not notice” this, but the visual analyzer may “KNOW” about it and “REMEMBER” it! And when I look at something else that is also “blinking” – the blades of the turntable, the analyzer compares the recent rapid blinking with the new one, and detects its relative slowness! Short-term visual memory involuntarily compares the frequency of lamp blinks and turntable “flickers”, therefore, AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF the FAST REMEMBERED flashing of lamp light, the “blinking” of the turntable seems slow. But after a couple of seconds, the old visual images disappear, are erased by new sensations, and the spinner BEGINS to “SPIN” FASTER.

But after all, the turntable has been standing for several months, and this strange phenomenon has only just been noticed!?

Additional improved explanation. For better vision, I put a broken optical disc behind the turntable, and today, while correcting it, I directed it purely by accident so that two LED lighting lamps began to reflect in it. So, their flashing light is obviously compared by my visual center in frequency with the flashing of the reflection from the turntable.

I conducted additional experiments: I turned off the lighting lamps and illuminated the turntable with a flashlight that was definitely NOT BLINKING! No acceleration or deceleration!

So is the above assumption correct?

This is the true reason for the phenomenon.

I haven’t come up with a better explanation for this illusion yet.

An interesting conclusion: It turns out that we perceive visual sensations not with our eyes, but with the short-term memory of the visual analyzer. With delay?!

Or does the visual center involuntarily compare new visual images with previous ones? And that, perhaps, distorts them?

Faciant meliora potentes.

9 X 2025