What color is the dress, black and blue or white and gold?

If you have checked any social media platforms or the internet in general on Friday, there is a high possibility that you came across an interesting debate over a photo of a dress, which split the internet into two groups over its color. Is it black and blue or white and gold?

It all started when a Tumblr user with the handle 'swiked' uploaded a picture of a dress with the caption: "guys please help me - is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can't agree..."

And then the Internet blew up.

A BuzzFeed page devoted to the debate had more than 25 million views early Friday, with 72 percent of Internet users insisting the dress was white and gold, while 28 percent swore it was blue and black.

After the huge reaction from social media , the Wired wrote a convincing piece on the reason we see the colors differently, and the science behind it.

"What's happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you're trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis," says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. "So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black." Wired reported.

Reena Garg, an assistant professor at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai in New York, also said the varied reactions can be explained by how we understand color, noting that the poorly exposed photograph was likely taken with a cell phone camera.

"If you see the dress as black and blue, you're probably seeing the photo as over-exposed, meaning there is too much light, so the colors in the dress appear darker to you after the retina has compensated," Garg said.

"If you see the dress as white and gold, you're probably seeing the photo as under-exposed, meaning there is too little light and the colors in the dress appear lighter to you after the retina has compensated."

But of course, there is an answer to it all, a description on British Roman Originals, the company who sells the dress, confirmed that it is, in fact royal blue with lace, and sells for £50 ($77).