Why does this still image appear to move?
One explanation is that the color white turns the receptors on our retinas on, while the color black shuts them off. Having white and black in close proximity, and in certain arrangements, makes them flicker between on and off. The changes from on to off and on again are interpreted by the brain as motion.
Another theory holds that our retina sections aren't flicking off and on, they're perceiving color changes. It's been noticed that, when black and white are striped, and those stripes move in different directions - for example the stripes are oriented differently in each of four sections of a grid - the eyes see illusory colors. The curves that we see around the dots might serve as different angled black and white lines, and we might see color changes that we interpret as motion.
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