231–240 of 270 posts
That settles it. We're living in a simulation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I can tell, it’s just a lucky coincidence that the distortion “cropped out” the water in this case, causing an exceptionally clean illusion. Compare with other images of fata Morgana[1] and you can see how it tends to look more distorted. 1: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fata+morgana&iax=images&ia=images
From your link I found this picture of 3 flying ships. https://i0.wp.com/www.astropt.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/20... I can feel my brain contorting a bit.
Why is there a hovering ship but no hovering sea?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a lay explanation. Light travels at different speeds in different substances. But it always takes a path that is locally fastest - meaning that any nearby path would be slower. (This is called the Fermat principle.) You can see this principle at work when you put a stick into water. Because light travels more slowly in water, the light first heads mostly straight up, then bends when it hits the air. The resul…
OK so, that's how the air ripples work for heat... because of the density of the air. It makes me wonder, if you had a 10 inch globe of vacuum suspended in air, how different looking thru it would appear vs the air. It seems like you might be able to detect it via sight alone.
But why does the ship appear in that location, and not the water it's sitting on? What's special about the ship?
I sort of freaked out the first time I saw something like this. Then Wikipedia held my hand and said everything was OK and this even has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
This picture will help explain the "superior mirage": https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Su... Note in the OP's original link the bottom half is cut off entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage?oldformat=true#Superior...
But why does the ship appear in that location, and not the water it's sitting on? What's special about the ship?
As near as I can tell from the wikipedia link in the comments below, it's because the ship is perpendicular to the water and the light just happens to be being refracted to that particular observer right at the water line. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)#/media/F...