161–170 of 270 posts
The title should be 'Hovering ship', as it is in the BBC article. There is nothing special about a floating ship.
I think "Flying" would be even better, as the ship is most likely moving somewhere, not just standing still. Would also tie the story into the story of the Flying Dutchman ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman ) and maybe provide some explanation for why people been seeing it as flying
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Title should be ‘Fata Morgana sighted off Cornish Coast.’
No, it is not a Fata Morgana [1] but a superior mirage [2] as the article says. A Fata Morgana is a subclass of superior mirage that has multiple distorted images. Just learned this because of another comment. Whether calling it a Fata Morgana would be appropriate because it is the common laymen term for mirages in English I can not tell as non-native speaker. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage) […
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Title should be ‘Fata Morgana sighted off Cornish Coast.’
No, it is not a Fata Morgana [1] but a superior mirage [2] as the article says. A Fata Morgana is a subclass of superior mirage that has multiple distorted images. Just learned this because of another comment. Whether calling it a Fata Morgana would be appropriate because it is the common laymen term for mirages in English I can not tell as non-native speaker. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage) […
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No, it is not a Fata Morgana [1] but a superior mirage [2] as the article says. A Fata Morgana is a subclass of superior mirage that has multiple distorted images. Just learned this because of another comment. Whether calling it a Fata Morgana would be appropriate because it is the common laymen term for mirages in English I can not tell as non-native speaker. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage) […
Another form of mirage are the Marfa Lights on Route 67, where (of course) UFO's were quickly in the picture. Most probably headlights, campfires. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights
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I might even go so far as to say that that is their desirable default state. As long as the front doesn’t fall off.
If anyone doesn’t get the reference, this is required viewing. It’s gold. https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
Off topic, but BBC blocks me because I use iPhone’s Adblock. BBC is government funded with a mission to inform the British people. Why would they require ad viewing and default to not showing news without ads? Seems against their mission. For profit news I understand as the whole “maximize shareholder equity” thing, but when government news sources use these anti-consumer tactics it’s depressing to me.
BBC is free to UK viewers but ad-supported for international viewers. This seems fair to me as UK citizens are the ones funding it.
Making a government news source profit seeking is a pretty bad plan, I think.
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)
"...The optical phenomenon occurs because rays of light are bent when they pass through air layers of different temperatures in a steep thermal inversion where an atmospheric duct has formed..." To me that's the most Men In Black explanation I've ever heard. Definitely confirms this is aliens.
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 result is that light does not travel a straight path to your eye. Which means that the part of the stick in the water looks like it is where the light comes out of the water, rather than where the stick is. As a result you can see the stick visibly bend.
Now what is happening here is that you have a layer of warm air over cold air. Light travels faster in warm air. (That is because as air warms it expands, making it less dense. Less dense means that there is less getting in the way of the light and it can move faster.) Therefore that fastest path is for the light to go up into the warm air, go along the warm air, and then dive back down to your eyes.
In many places you can see the reverse of this on hot days where hot ground makes for a hot air layer next to the ground. When the conditions are right the light from the sky can reach your eyes by skimming along the ground, and you get blue patches in the ground. In a desert this can look like water in the distance.
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I might even go so far as to say that that is their desirable default state. As long as the front doesn’t fall off.
If anyone doesn’t get the reference, this is required viewing. It’s gold. https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
The format and humour remind me very strongly of the Bird & Fortune (aka The Long Johns) skits here in the UK:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bird+%26+fortun...
There was one in our local newspaper last year at Folkestone (UK) https://www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/news/floating-ship-a...
'Floating ship' appears over Folkestone harbour