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Are you colorblind or is it a trick of the computer monitor?
Will the owner of this dress please solve the mystery?
Choose your answer wisely.
Everywhere you look, people seem to be debating an all-important question that has taken over Twitter and the Internet: What color is this dress?
Some see white and gold. Others see blue and black. There’s no middle ground.
The Great Dress Debate of 2015 began when a woman posted a picture of the polarizing garment to Tumblr and asked for help in identifying its colors. The dispute quickly spread Thursday night to Twitter, where people split into two camps: #teamblueandblack and #teamwhiteandgold.
Even Philadelphia police weighed in, tweeting: “WANTED: This dress to stop appearing in our feed (Even though we’d look simply ravishing in it) #BlueAndBlack.”
By Friday, everyone seemed to have an opinion on #TheDress.
Now, before you get in a fistfight and turn someone’s arm black and blue, let’s settle the crucial question: The dress is black and blue. The company that makes it has confirmed its color scheme.
We can blame the Internet for trolling our collective retinas. But science plays a role as well.
“It has to do with the tiny cones in the back of our eyeballs that perceive colors in a slightly different way depending upon our genes,” explains CNN’s Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
“The cones in our retinas — the fine layer of nerve tissue that lines the back of our eyes — detect the blue, green, and red in an image. The cones and your brain mix those colors to make other colors.”
CNN’s Sarah LeTrent contributed to this story.