Are these flip flops white and gold or black and blue?

Just as the internet was getting over The Dress, a new viral photo has left people divided over the colour of a pair of flip flops.

A Twitter user uploaded a seemingly innocent snap of a pair of Havaianas shoes online this week.

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But the picture has sparked confusion over what colour the flip flops actually are.

While some think they are black and blue, others argue they are black and brown - and some even white and gold.

The same happened in February 2015, when a picture of a dress split the internet over what colour it was.

It turned out that people view the picture in different ways depending on what side of the brain they are using.

This also seems to be the case with the new viral meme, which has been shared hundreds of times since it was posted on Thursday.

There still doesn't seem to be a concrete conclusion over what colour they are, though some are tearing their hair out over the correct answer.

Lauren Danielle Smith posted on Facebook: "This is crazy. This came up on my newsfeed earlier and they was blue black and silver.

"Just seen them now they looked gold then scrolled back up but they look blue again. This has confused me."

Stacey Gardner wrote: "White and gold , fella can see grey and blue and I don't get how!!!"

And Natalie Florey commented: "I say blue and gold with silver straps. The other half says green and blue with silver straps."

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The original meme sparked a hashtag with Twitter users posting their thoughts on the Roman Originals design using #thedress.

But scientists revealed why it is exactly that we see the garments differently.

It comes down that the way that human eyes have evolved to view colour in a world where the main source of light is sunlight.

We see the objects around us because light bounces off them and back onto our retinas.

The brain has learnt to register what colour the actual light source is and then subtract that colour from the actual colour of the object.

So imagine a yellow-y light on a white object - the brain understands that the yellow light is influencing the colour of the surface it's landing on and will try and ignore it.

Humans have evolved to deal with a range of coloured light, since we're used to the sun shifting through a range of colours from sunrise to sunset, with more yellowy and red colours at either and of the day and more bluish white colours in the middle of the day.

In the case of the blue dress, the brain is trying to subtract the colour bias caused by the light source.

But some people's brains are trying to get rid of the blueish tones - so they will see white and gold - and some are trying to get rid of the yellowy gold tones, which means they'll see blue and black.