'Hovering Ship' Photographed Off Cornish Coast By Walker (bbc.com) 63
Images of what appears to be a hovering ship have been captured as the result of a rare optical illusion off the coast of England. From a report: David Morris took a photo of the ship near Falmouth, Cornwall. BBC meteorologist David Braine said the "superior mirage" occurred because of "special atmospheric conditions that bend light". He said the illusion is common in the Arctic, but can appear "very rarely" in the UK during winter. Mr Morris said he was "stunned" after capturing the picture while looking out to sea from the hamlet of Gillan. Mr Braine said: "Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it. "Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears.
I don't know, therefore ALIENS (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously aliens are at work here. That mirage explanation is just too crazy to be true.
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Re: I don't know, therefore ALIENS (Score:1)
Looking at quantum field theory right now, that comment becomes way more serious and believable. ;)
(Shameless ScienceClick English plug [youtube.com]. It's like a 3blue1brown for physics.)
Re: I don't know, therefore ALIENS (Score:1)
Flerf (Score:3)
Re:Flerf (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty simple since flat earthers don't believe in gravity but instead believe everything is being accelerated in the "upward" direction. That is why a soccer ball and cannonball "fall" at the same rate.... duh!
https://wiki.tfes.org/Universa... [tfes.org]
In this case, perhaps the ship is being accelerated slightly faster than the earth for some reason. Or maybe the ship and people onboard are part of an early test run of the rapture.
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By now it looks like they've found some retorts for such questions.
The funniest part I found was this one:
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As a round-Earther, it stumps me also. "The atmosphere went weird today" sounds like a cop-out.
Imagine medieval people seeing that. They'd contribute it to a giant miracle and write hymns about it.
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Refraction isn't really a super difficult concept. They teach it to six year olds. If you didn't have the benefit of modern education though, yeah, hymns.
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Even with refraction there's an interesting anomaly that the light reflecting off the ship has been refracted but not the light reflecting off the sea behind it (or behind and to the sides).
No, I can't easily explain that one.
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A really freak coincidence of multiple factors, it seems.
Must be gods :-)
HMS Guinness (Score:5, Funny)
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Sure wish I had some mod points.
Who is Walker? (Score:3)
The article makes no mention.
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Typically a dead person walking.
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I've heard a rumour his first name was Johnny. Apparently drinking what he gives you makes you see ships float.
Re: Who is Walker? (Score:1)
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Abc (Score:5, Funny)
'Hovering Ship' Photographed Off Cornish Coast By Walker
Freakin' Chuck Norris.
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Re: Abc (Score:1)
They are Chuck Norris ships.
As we can clearly see now:
They don't get wet.
The water gets Chuck Norris.
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I was thinking of a zombie.
Who knew? (Score:4, Funny)
BS? (Score:1)
I call BS.
While the ship is perfectly 'reflected' without any atmospheric distortion there is no trace whatsoever of the surrounding water. Now, i'm fine with optical illusions. But air with photoshop skills? Don't think so.
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Interesting. So apparently the actual illusion is the water/air and not the ship.
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Looking at the pictures, it seems it's the lack of water due to a dark cloud / light cloud boundary, not a fog bank. The light clouds in the distance are being reflected off the sea, also in the distance. The dark clouds, out of frame above us, are being reflected on the closer sea. The difference between the light clouds and the light sea is lost in the large dynamic range between both of them and the nearby darker sea.
If true than that's nothing to do with the bending of light.
Great explanation (Score:2)
Thanks for the link.
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I did, thank you.
The explanation that it's an inferior mirage rather than a superior one made a lot of difference to how I interpreted the photograph.
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Feel free to call BS all you want. Or educate yourself on Fata Morgana. Your choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:BS? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.metabunk.org/threa... [metabunk.org]
"Despite the Science Channel's talking heads saying this is a Fata Morgana, it very obviously is not. The giveaway is the total lack of distortion, duplicated images, or inversion. It's just a boat, relatively close to shore, but beyond a false horizon created by the fog bank behind and around the boat, combined with the shallow angle at that distance, altering the reflection off the surface of the sea. If you boost the levels in the image, as I did with the title image of this post, then you can see where the horizon would be."
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None of the pictures (even the hand-drawn ones) look like the picture in TFA.
Notice how all the real fata morgana pictures show distorted reflections and other details completely lacking in TFA.
So it looks like it's either some other atmospheric phenomenon or it is fake.
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Now assume that the ship hasn't been distorted because that's its actual position relative to the observer.
The sky has been distorted, not the ship.
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How can the sky be distorted but not the ship? Why would the water be replaced by the sky, but the ship that is right on top of the water is not replaced by the sky.
I think that the here is actually no lens-like light bending going on in the air like with a proper mirage. It looks like this is due to the water acting like a mirror, maybe due to particular wave geometry or something and angle of the observation.
Huh? (Score:3)
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https://www.metabunk.org/threa... [metabunk.org]
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The true horizon is explained in the posted link
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There is no particular reason the illusion starts at the waterline, it just happened to at the exact moment the picture was taken. If you followed the illusion for some time sometimes you'd see a little water, sometimes less ship.
These "Fata Morganas" are actually pretty common, but often the thing on the horizon is so distorted you can't recognize it. Not only was this a lucky shot, it was shot in unusual conditions. These illusions happen when air masses of different temperatures overlay each other,
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
You'd be right, but in this case it's not a Fata Morgana and nothing to do with air temperature. Rather it's to do with water colour and long distance reflection from the water surface.
A Fata Morgana *never* produces a distortion free image.
Other news sites report this in Scotland (Score:2)
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/... [mirror.co.uk]
(Yeah I know, mirror). So is it all bullshit? Can't believe any photos or videos these days, and "reporting" is frequently news sites picking things off social media
Black Swan (Score:2)
Floaty McFloatface (Score:1)
nuf sed
Mirage, my ass (Score:3)
The horizon is not the horizon, it's the beginning of the mist, the real horizon is behind the ship in the fog.
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The ship is below the horizon, you wouldn't even be able to see it without the mirage, go get your self some education: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com... [blogspot.com]
Re:Mirage, my ass (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.metabunk.org/threa... [metabunk.org]
No, the OP is correct (or more correct)
The photograph (Score:1)
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/... [bbci.co.uk]
This is the sort of photo that looks exactly like photoshop - but it's a beautiful example of Fata Morgana.
obligatory wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
gandharvá-nagara (Score:1)
gandharvá-nagara [ gandharvanagara ]
n. ' Gandharva-city ', an imaginary town in the sky, MBh. ii, 1043, Hariv. R. v, etc.
Fata Morgana, P. iv, 1, 3, Kr. VarBS. xxx ; xxxvi, 4, BhP. v, 14, 5, Kd.
the city of the Gandharva people, R. vii.
n. gandharvanagara kind of mirage over water or sand
n. gandharvanagara imaginary town in the sky
n. gandharvanagara city of the gandharva people
Imperial Star Destroyer? (Score:1)
Alex Jones was right (Score:2)
On the plus side.. (Score:1)
Titanic (Score:2)
Your eyes can deceive you, dont trust them - Obi Wan
Wow! (Score:2)
I expected some grey UFO looking blob thing but wow!
This is caused by a ... (Score:1)