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'Hovering ship' photographed off Cornish coast by walker
- GameOfKnowing 6y agoHonestly given that weird explanation, I think Occam’s Razor says that ship can fly 0.0
- ojnabieoot 6y agoThe schematic here on Wikipedia might help clarify: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fada_morgana_graphnn.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fada_morgana_graphnn... If instead of layers of warm/cold air there were giant glass lenses hovering over the ocean, the mirage wouldn’t be mysterious.
- xaduha 6y agoI think they were attempting a joke. Hot-road mirage is a common thing that most people that were in a car trip during summer have seen, same principles.
- ojnabieoot 6y agoI’m aware it was a joke :) But I think the confusion was sincere; the explanation in the article is lacking if you don’t have a clear picture to begin with.
- leobabauta 6y agoI’d find giant lenses hovering over the ocean to be pretty mysterious.
- Igelau 6y agoAh, so there's a man on an island bobbing fake ships on his massive attenae. It's like the myth of the Sirens but instead of ladies saying, "come heeeeere" it's a dude saying, "look a shiiiip".
- hrnnnnnn 6y agoThe Action Lab had a great video about this effect recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrgKUFbwNf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrgKUFbwNf0
- istjohn 6y agoFascinating. From the video, this same effect can even invert the image so that a ship appears to hover upside down: a ghost ship.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stjohnswarts 6y agoghost ship are supposed to hover upside down? I thought they were just supposed to be ghostly and spooky?
- jcims 6y agoI love this guy's channel. He's constantly cranking out new ideas.
- centimeter 6y agoI'm always really impressed how he can make a video that sounds like clickbait, but usually go into pretty interesting (and accurate) scientific detail.
- IgorPartola 6y agoThis is what I came here for. Thank you for the link.
- sandworm101 6y agoGive it the proper name. This where the "flying" part of the Flying Dutchman comes from.
- htkyoholk 6y agoNice try by the government to cover up testing of anti-gravity drive recovered from UFO.
- guram11 6y agoAs always never believe anything until it is officially denied
- klingon79 6y agoWhile it’s the less plausible explanation, I think this theory should be explored further. With a photo like this, what can we do to assist in proving or disproving the theory that it’s indeed flying? Also, is the headline incorrect if it indicates that it’s flying when it’s not, if it appears to be?
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
- Thomashuet 6y agoThe title should be 'Hovering ship', as it is in the BBC article. There is nothing special about a floating ship.
- mannykannot 6y agoThe original title may have changed in response to similar comments.
- dustinmoris 6y agoBBC article names change very frequently, often multiple times in only a few hours.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoreassuring to know i'm not the only one we [edit:who] (the irony) edits my post:)
- petercooper 6y agoJust for fun, you can track title edits happening on HN as well! https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/
- marshmallow_12 6y agothanks.
- itcrowd 6y agoProbably A/B testing through social media clicks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 6y ago
- leetrout 6y agoSome think this affected the crew on the Titanic and prevented them from seeing the iceberg and some closer ships from seeing her. https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/today-good-reads-did-optical-illusion-doom-titanic/ https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/today-good-re...
- throwawinsider 6y agoThis is just a sample of the possibilities in post Brexit Britain
- 51Cards 6y agoNext international helium shipment on its way.
- peterburkimsher 6y agoYou must be thinking of an airship, not an air ship.
- mc32 6y agoIsn’t this just Fata Morgana?
- Zenst 6y agoYes - it is exactly that, when the ocean is cooler than the above air is when this can happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
- injb 6y agoBut why does the ship appear in that location, and not the water it's sitting on? What's special about the ship?
- voodootrucker 6y agoAs 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/File:Fada_morgana_graphnn.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)#/media/F...
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoIt's not a Fata Morgana or a superior mirage. It's a false horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k
- leetrout 6y agoI wouldn’t be surprised to discover the photographer had to adjust their position to capture just the ship
- tobr 6y agoAs 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 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fata+morgana&iax=images&ia=images
- hu3 6y agoFrom your link I found this picture of 3 flying ships. https://i0.wp.com/www.astropt.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/fata-morgana.png https://i0.wp.com/www.astropt.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/20... I can feel my brain contorting a bit.
- vanderZwan 6y agoAnyone else instantly hear the Imperial March and imagining X-wings and Tie-fighters flying around it upon seeing that photo? (and I'm not even a Star Wars fan) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8
- prepend 6y agoOff 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.
- CaptainSwing 6y agoUnderfunding and neoliberal management. There's a fair chance the government is hollowing it out to undermine public perception of the institution so they cang et away with doing away with it completely.
- mywacaday 6y agoBBC news used to be so good for a long time but over the last few years it seems to be gravitating more towards advertising and click bait.
- agd 6y agoBBC is free to UK viewers but ad-supported for international viewers. This seems fair to me as UK citizens are the ones funding it.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoexactly! we don't want just anyone reading OUR news for free;) (I'm a bit horrible that i'm happy because someone else is having a worse internet experience then me. I'll try and work on myself.)
- statstutor 6y agoI have occasionally sent BBC articles to my friends in the UK, only to find the article is blocked in the UK. I guess it's shockingly difficult to identify advertorials.
- prepend 6y agoThe marginal cost of UK vs international viewers is less than the ad revenue collected, I expect. Since the ads are the same as CNN or other for profit news agencies it also seems odd that a non-profit, government (in the English language sense, not the UK part of government sense) would have more stringent ad controls than for profit. Making a government news source profit seeking is a pretty bad plan, I think.
- jpcooper 6y agoIf anyone wants to learn more about paranormal activity in Cornwall, they can check out a relevant episode of Fortean TV, a fantastic documentary series from the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aEX3Z3mjCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aEX3Z3mjCk.
- mprev 6y agoBut this isn’t paranormal. Fortean TV was, admittedly, fun but silly fun nonetheless.
- cs702 6y agoI've seen this optical illusion in person, with large container ships, off the US Mid-Atlantic coast, and it's really cool. The photo in this article is fantastic. It shows an extreme example of the illusion. The ship appears to be, not just hovering over the water, but actually suspended in mid-air. In my view, it's worth clicking on the link just to see the photo.
- globular-toast 6y agoSomething just occurred to me. Is this actually an optical illusion? My idea of an optical illusion is one where your brain perceives something that is different from reality. Indeed, when I look it up I see examples of that (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion) But in this case your brain isn't doing anything wrong, the light reaching your eyes is what's "wrong" and your brain is correctly interpreting what your eyes see (as shown by the photograph).
- e_proxus 6y agoWikipedia uses the term optical phenomenon.
- red_trumpet 6y agoThe Wikipedia article contains a helpful table [1], which classifies optical illusions. One kind are "physical" illusions, like rainbows or distortions (think stick in water). I think the hovering ship is of that kind. Other kinds include "physiological" or "cognitive", which are tricking your brain. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion#/media/File:Gregory_categorization_of_illusions_1991.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion#/media/File:G...
- thedanbob 6y agoI think you're right, this is a mirage. The article uses both terms interchangeably.
- jamiek88 6y ago
- strawBarry 6y ago"Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus." - Jesse Ventura
- tartoran 6y agoId pinch myself if I ever see that before my eyes. And when I see that Im not dreaming I’d be stunned. I still am as I’ve never seen this one so up in the air before
- marcodiego 6y agoFood for conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoIt's strange that the air and the water below the "floating" ship is so crisp and clear. In a superior illusion, there normally is quite a bit of distortion appearing like a wall of fog or galss under the ship (or island etc). It's also strange that this was seen at a very close range when such illusions normally involve objects far away, near the horizon. Is it possible this image is a hoax, or that it was edited to exaggerate the real effect?
- htkyoholk 6y agoMaybe the photograph took 100 pictures from various positions, like tourists holding up the Pisa tower.
- CRConrad 6y agoThe BBC says lots of people saw it, so I'd guess not a hoax. Sure, it could be edited, but Occam's razor suggests this guy just happened to be the one standing where it looked the clearest, so his photo was the one they selected to publish. (Also, what's to say it "was seen at a very close range" -- does the picture on the web page include meta info on what degree of zoom he used?)
- depaya 6y agoTangentially related, the fantastic WWII submarine book 'Thunder Down Below' talks about a similar mirage issue being a common occurrence in their submarine warfare. They would see ships that appear to be on the horizon but are actually hundreds of miles away. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=Jm-iiEis05AC https://books.google.com/books?id=Jm-iiEis05AC
- marshmallow_12 6y agowow! hundreds of miles! that's extraordinary. tell me this is only possible using specialist telescopes etc.
- guerrilla 6y agoThis actually happens pretty frequently where I live, except what we see is trees on a far off island floating. I've never seen a ship float, but now I'll be looking for it.
- broooder 6y agoWho is walker?
- tremon 6y agoCornish ranger.
- andbberger 6y agoHarmonielehre.
- marshmallow_12 6y agothis kind of steals the thunder from the flying pirates ship in Peter Pan. I'll have to reconsider my childhood.
- sandworm101 6y agoI know these things are happen and I understand the effect, but has anyone looked into whether this was photoshopped? Major news outlets have been fooled in the past. Maybe it is a compression artifact, but the lines of this image look so perfect that I have to at least ask.
- mythbuster1969 6y agoI think it was photoshopped. I zoomed in on the photo and if you look closely at the edges around the ship, the colors do not match up with the rest of the photo. As in most photoshop fails, the ship was not cleanly cropped from its original photo, and the parts around the edges of the ship in the original photo don't match the photo in which the ship was inserted.
- mythbuster1969 6y agoThere is no visible wake in the ocean, which there should be, even if a mirage made the ship that made the wake appear to be above the oceam. Therefore this photo is fake.
- ridaj 6y agoI 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
- midrus 6y ago"...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.
- Gupie 6y agoOr proof the earth is flat.
- saalweachter 6y agoNah, they're just sailing to Valinor.
- dbetteridge 6y agoBasically the layers of air above the water have slight variations (temperature, humidity, pressure) between them in such a way that they each have a small change in refractive index that over a distance bends light upwards. Then you have another group of layers of air further up in the 'marine boundary layer' that bends the light back towards the waters surface. This is called an 'atmospheric duct' and is somewhat similar in the effect to a fibre optic cable. Poor mans source: I wrote my thesis 5+ years ago on refractive effects in the maritime boundary layer [1] [1] https://ceed.wa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/DSTO-Refractive-Effects-in-Maritime-Boundary-Layer-Daniel-Betteridge.pdf https://ceed.wa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/DSTO-Refra...
- djrogers 6y agoAgent D, you're making it worse...
- boringg 6y agoI love stuff like this - reminds you that Science Rules Everything Around Me and will play tricks on me.
- lebuffon 6y agoVery nice picture, but how does this advance the "flat earth theory"? :)
- kerblang 6y agoI know you're joking, but this is highly useful in this regard, because flat-earthers often swear up & down that they can see beyond the "ostensible" horizon limit without understanding that refraction effect. This one is kind of unique but it demonstrates refraction nicely. Really, I think we're usually so busy being dismissive and condescending towards flat-earthers, it's easy to forget that proving the spherical earth is kind of a tricky matter without putting people in spaceships (but if I could afford it, I'd happily buy a few tickets for them...)
- helge9210 6y agoI've seen illusion like this off Herzelia, Israel coast couple of years ago. I think I even made couple of pictures.
- tempodox 6y agoThe Flying Dutchman?
- brundolf 6y agoHoly geez. I expected a tiny gap; this thing looks like an aircraft. Wild. I wonder if this effect has contributed to some "ghost ship" legends in the past?
- xyzzyz 6y agoIf you want to see ship hovering for real, check out America Cup 75 yacht racing. This year the new rules for yacht design made it so that the yachts literally are flying over the water. https://youtu.be/r6HW52g1JwM https://youtu.be/r6HW52g1JwM
- mikhailfranco 6y agoWhat has the world come to, when a BBC 'journalist' can write an article like this, without even including the words 'fata morgana'? Of course, we know the answer, it is a comprehensive lack of education, and a total failure of any claim to knowledge, by a self-appointed class, which pretends to tell us about the world. I would normally just say caveat emptor, and hope the journalist would be fired, or the news agency go out of business immediately, but the Brits have a mandatory tax, called the 'TV License' to sustain all this bullshit.
- Ragnarork 6y agoIf this is your metric for how the world is doing, then it's fine. Of course we know it isn't, but this right here is absolutely not a core issue with it.
- kiba 6y agoComprehensive lack of education? People received an education for ~12 years. In most parts of the world, I would say _caveat emptor_ and the agency would go out of business immediately, but the Brits have a mandatory tax, called the 'TV License' to pay for this bullshit. Would they? This is the first time I heard of this phenomena, so I wouldn't know.
- mikhailfranco 6y agoIf you are British, you will recognise my italics. It is perfectly acceptable for any member of the public to be ignorant of some unusual phenomenon. It would be fine if this was a blog from the walker who took the photo. But it is not acceptable for a professional 'journalist': either they are a 'science correspondent' and they should know the answer; or they are temp-ing in the science department, and should ask an expert, or at least find 5 minutes from their busy day to google the explanation. Then again, most 'journalists' these days seem to be employed by the 'social media' department.
- danbruc 6y agoI am not an expert but according to Wikipedia this is a superior mirage just as the article says but not a Fata Morgana [2] which is a subclass of superior mirage that has multiple stacked images. So the uneducated author got it right after all. ;-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
- jeffmcmahan 6y agoI live on Lake Erie, and I've seen this effect before. There will be a point between the shore and the horizon at which the water takes on exactly the hue and luminance of the sky, and makes lakers, sailboats, buoys, even a nearby lighthouse, appear to hover. If the point of transition in the color of the water is pretty straight and is parallel with the actual horizon, the effect is convincing.
- jeffwass 6y agoThat’s not the case here. In this case the ship was ‘hovering’ due to an atmospheric effect called Superior Mirage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Superior_mirage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Superior_mirage
- treesprite82 6y agoThe image in the article looks more like a false horizon (change in color of sea makes it blend into the sky), as jeffmcmahan is describing. You can just about make out the real horizon in the image. Clearer example of false horizon: https://i.imgur.com/WHzQJ3Z.png https://i.imgur.com/WHzQJ3Z.png A superior mirage would usually cause more distortion and likely wouldn't so cleanly cut out the ship. Clearer example of superior mirage: https://i.imgur.com/pa16mOk.png https://i.imgur.com/pa16mOk.png
- jvm_ 6y agoI've heard of this happening across Lake Erie, people in Canada said they could see the color of the traffic lights all the way across the lake in Erie PA.
- roelschroeven 6y agoDoes anyone else have intermittent problems resolving BBC domains, or is it just me? Sometimes I can't resolve www.bbc.co.uk, sometimes it works. Same for www.bbc.com. I don't have that problem with any other domain name I have encountered. The intermittency makes it very hard to troubleshoot.
- damau 6y agoThis has happened to me. Do you use a VPN at all?. I think by connecting from different perceived places between your IP location and the cookie (from a previous visit at a previous IP location) can confuse the redirect.
- piinbinary 6y agoI wonder if effects like these were the inspiration for the design of the imperial star destroyers in Star Wars.
- chrisbuc 6y agoThere was one in our local newspaper last year at Folkestone (UK) https://www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/news/floating-ship-appears-in-the-sky-225189/ https://www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/news/floating-ship-a...
- iso1631 6y agoAlso with the hilarious headline 'Floating ship' appears over Folkestone harbour
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoTwo others https://worldtruth.tv/footage-of-ship-flying-above-the-ocean-goes-viral/ https://worldtruth.tv/footage-of-ship-flying-above-the-ocean... https://digg.com/2018/floating-ships-illusion-fata-morgana https://digg.com/2018/floating-ships-illusion-fata-morgana
- sfjailbird 6y agoMaybe this kind of thing is the origin of the 'Flying Dutchman' legend.
- djmips 6y agoIt occurred to me that maybe Castle In The Sky (Ghibli) might have some origin (possibly) from such illusions. There was a Chinese news report of a city in the sky illusion. Here's the video, quite impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoP1sh1WXm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoP1sh1WXm8
- qqii 6y agoThe video, although reported to be from the same phenomenon is actually a fake: https://youtu.be/Xmrn2IuSW-Q https://youtu.be/Xmrn2IuSW-Q
- slacktide 6y agoUm, “Castle in the Sky” had it’s origin in “Gulliver’s Travels”, published in 1726. Part III, a Voyage to Laputa (et al.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels#Part_III:_A_Voyage_to_Laputa,_Balnibarbi,_Luggnagg,_Glubbdubdrib_and_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels#Part_III:...
- klingon79 6y agoAnd “Castles in the Sky” was about the development of radar in England.
- qqii 6y agoAs a tangent there is this excellent Captain Disillusion video debunking the floating city which was attributed to the same phenomenon as seen here: https://youtu.be/Xmrn2IuSW-Q https://youtu.be/Xmrn2IuSW-Q
- jonplackett 6y agoThis is making me think again about all those UFO sightings in The Phenomenon!
- throwawaycodrrr 6y agoThis is why you never use negative margin in CSS.
- cvaidya1986 6y agoBest cover up article yet for alien hovering tech
- chenning 6y ago"Just say it's the warm air and the cold air and bending light and stuff. They'll buy it."
- ericmay 6y agoAnd now you know the source of the "Flying" Dutchman ;)
- it 6y agoI prefer to think it's antigravity. If it's just light bending then why don't we also see the surrounding water elevated in the supposed mirage?
- im3w1l 6y agoWhy is there a hovering ship but no hovering sea?
- Marazan 6y agoThe only important question in the world right now.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThe image of the ship would be dominated by reflected light off of side of the ship, water would not cause the same turn around due to the grazing rays.
- MauranKilom 6y agoBriefly: Because the ship is above the sea. If conditions were slightly different you might also see some part of the sea hovering, or the lower part of the ship missing. In this case the "cutoff" happens to align with where the sea would end (i.e. the horizon).
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoIt's actually a false horizon, not a superior mirage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k
- nerpderp82 6y agoHeh, Optical DX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXing#DX_Communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXing#DX_Communication
- randomsearch 6y agoWhen I see things like this, I imagine how people would have reacted before we had explanations... it isn't difficult to imagine where some myths and religious stories originate.
- kubanczyk 6y agoThe Flying Dutchman :)
- contingencies 6y agoThe most famous related Chinese mythology is from Yantai in Shandong which is at a roughly similar latitude. They call it "the eight immortals crossing the sea" (八仙过海; bā xiān guò hǎi). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals https://penglaicity.blogspot.com/2010/06/visions-of-immortal-life-in-penglai.html https://penglaicity.blogspot.com/2010/06/visions-of-immortal... Unfortunately in a misguided bid to generate more tourist dollars in 2011 the local government razed the previously beautiful port and replaced it with a walled fake ancient town. http://pratyeka.org/penglai-destroyed/ http://pratyeka.org/penglai-destroyed/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ardit33 6y agoThis is not a rare illusion. When I used to be a kid, we saw this illusion all the time When we went to the beach in Albania (Port of Durres) The Adriatic see can be very calm sometimes, and the blue waters do match the same color/blue hue of the sky.
- dmix 6y agoThis picture will help explain the "superior mirage": https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Superior_mirage_of_ships_in_the_Gulf_of_Riga.jpg/1599px-Superior_mirage_of_ships_in_the_Gulf_of_Riga.jpg 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_mirage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage?oldformat=true#Superior...
- breck 6y agoOh wow! Thanks for sharing. I thought the original looked super weird, but seeing your "distorted" version instantly brought back flashbacks to when I saw this in South Dennis, MA, a few years ago. I took photos and couldn't figure out what the heck was out there, but it was this. Thanks!
- ryantgtg 6y agoGrowing up in Santa Barbara, I would see something like this everyday. Freighters going through the channel, the oil derricks, and the Channels Islands all exhibited it.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoThis _is not_ a superior mirage, it's a false horizon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k
- dmix 6y agoThanks for clearing that up, I learned something today. That actually makes a lot of sense as well. It’s interesting the BBC experts didn’t catch the difference but that’s the benefit of the internet I guess.
- CRConrad 6y ago> Note in the OP's original link the bottom half is cut off entirely. Not by any optical effect, I think -- you're seeing all that's visible of it where it actually is, too: The bit that's "cut off" is just what's hidden below the water line. (Some other post here suggested a thin line of water may actually be barely visible along the lower edge of the ship in the "mirage" photo.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chenning 6y agoThat settles it. We're living in a simulation.
- pvarangot 6y agoYour perception of the ship position is definitely more similar to "a simulation" than to "the absolute truth about where the ship is", so if you want to understand it like that then yeah. If by this statement you mean that the ship or we are all some kind of software construct programmed by some other beings that can simulate things then I think you should leave religion out of the dicussion.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ksaj 6y agoI strongly suspect the Marfa Lights (in Texas) are the land version of this exact phenomenon. In that case, car headlights looking like they are floating above the land horizon instead of boats over the water horizon.
- sixstringtheory 6y agoAnother headlight phenomenon, "light pillars": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pillar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pillar Really freaked me out the first time I saw some moving about on a dark country road from other cars off in the distance.
- ksaj 6y agoI saw them only one time in my life, a few decades ago. I was leaving a band practice, and the drummer's sister and I were pretty blown away when we noticed it. Well, that's an understatement, because you couldn't miss it. Every light that could be seen was at the base of a pillar. We didn't know why it was happening, but we were pretty impressed. Pictures do not give you the full experience, since there is a huge 3D element to how they appear, too.
- person_of_color 6y agoCould this be what caused the TicTac video?
- bumbledraven 6y agoNeat! Something like this could have been the inspiration for The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris Van Allsburg. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wreck-of-the-zephyr-30th-anniversary-edition-chris-van-allsburg/1114125512 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wreck-of-the-zephyr-30t...
- aaron695 6y agoThis photo is fake. Or it doesn't not represent reality, I guess is more true. If you were there, you would clearly see it's just a boat sitting on the water. The water changing color towards the ship I guess you could take a photo yourself, reduce the resolution like here, pick the one that works best and show people, a similar 'real' photo and lie and say it's called a 'superior mirage' (It's beyond a false horizon). But you will never have seen it either, it only exists in the photo. "Hovering Boats are Usually Not Mirages, they are beyond False Horizons" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k
- krupan 6y agoLook up Floating Island on the Utah Salt Flats. Similar type of mirage
- mgerdts 6y agoI think I saw Hog Island in Lake Michigan do this trick back in 2006. https://imgur.com/gallery/eopHRkJ https://imgur.com/gallery/eopHRkJ
- TexasfoldsEm 6y agoWhat are the giant cities that appeared in the clouds in India and China on several occasions. I thought it was a fake the first time until I saw that there were thousands of different people who uploaded video of this. There were ,amy uploads every time it was not some crap prank. Sometimes they look like it is just an illusion of the clouds, but there ar a few times it is so obvious and thousands or maybe more people ooohhhing awwwwing and others screaming at how obvious it is. I had many different thoughts once I saw video after video and angle after angle. I have heard of project blue beam which is a pretty ominous program involving NATO countries; could these be their own versions of the technologies"? If so it truly shows the power of government to manipulate the masses to think anything in an extreme way to make over reaching changes. I mean the television has most people believing mainly lies anyway so their is obviously something nefarious planned for the future. Which CIA director was it that said once nearly everything the American public thinks and believes is false then our plan is nearly complete? Blue Beam could scare people out of the rest of their freedoms if they believe their is an alien invasion or Jesus is up their telling them to do so. hahahaha The two party fake choice and the ral deep state which are the long term embedded scum in government all need to be cleard out. I am glad I am from Texas and we are pushing in mass for changes. Florida is doing the right thing without much push from the people. I wish you lal the best of luck and happiness. Think for yourselves and question everything. Second best advice I ever got was that prior statement and the very best is the realization that no matter what I think I know; I know nothing for certain. Cheers
- ashton314 6y agoReally neat to see what deploying a containerized application to the cloud looks like! (Seriously, people. It’s been hours—has no one cracked a kubernetes joke about this yet?)
- kortex 6y agoI was looking for the CSS offset joke but I like this one better
- cbogie 6y agodue to a contextualized cognitive hiccup, i noticed another illusion in the article. my brain told me the meteorologist’s name was ‘david blaine’, the catatonic magician.
- mythbuster1969 6y agoThese kinds of stories always seem to originate in the UK. I read somewhere that planting fake news stories in the mainstream media is a favorite pasttime of the Brits. I believe that this has been photoshopped. I zoomed in on the photo and it is clear to me that the telltale signs of photoshopping are visible around the edges of the ship.
- PhilosAccnting 6y agoEven if this was shopped, the illusion was correct, meaning the sailors' tall tales from a few hundred years ago weren't quite so tall. I mean, mermaids ≡ dolphins, so ghost ship ≡ floating ship.
- mauvehaus 6y agoOverloaded Helium tanker?
- peq 6y agoA vacuum "filled" tanker would be lighter than a helium filled one :D
- mythbuster1969 6y agoWhere is the ship's wake? Even if this were the result of a mirage that makes objects appear higher than they are, there should still a wake in the ocean where the ship actually is. This photo is fake.