You know how, when you know what the illusion is, it doesn’t fool you anymore?

You know, like the “is this a picture of a young woman or an old woman:”

Or the vase/face:

Or this thing:

Right. You’ve seen those before, so you know how they work, so they don’t fool you anymore. Hey, they’re just illusions. It’s all in fun.

But, maybe some illusions, we’d rather not know:

It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and dreams.

But what if it’s all an illusion, a sort of cosmic frill, or a side effect of something else going on at deeper levels of reality?

Gulp.

So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists, or at least among those who profess to understand it.

Pretty frickin’ important illusion, wouldn’t you say?

“For me gravity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Verlinde, who was recently in the United States to explain himself.

Somebody, quick, shut this guy up. On the other hand, some of us could lose a little weight.