Scientists develop Phoney app to optimise magic tricks
Scientists have developed a computer program with an algorithm to optimise magic tricks and invent new ones.
Revealed in Frontiers in Psychology, scientists gave the program an outline of how a mind-reading trick works, and the results of experiments into how humans understand magic, and the system created new variants that can be performed by a magician.
Peter McOwan, a professor of computer science at Queen Mary University of London and a co-author of the paper, said: “There’s no such thing as magic. It’s just hidden science with a good performance.”
An app, named Phoney, was also developed by the scientists to allow amateurs to learn an apparently random sequence of 52 cards by heart.
McOwan added: “People weren’t as sceptical as you might think. Some people were asking if I had an X-ray scanner in my phone.”