{"id":119,"date":"2026-07-09T12:50:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/?p=119"},"modified":"2026-07-09T12:50:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T12:50:05","slug":"incredible-optical-illusion-makes-boat-appear-like-its-floating-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"Incredible Optical Illusion Makes Boat Appear Like It\u2019s Floating In The Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-120\" src=\"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/738667805_1345996504335558_1741515411476048685_n-247x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"247\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/738667805_1345996504335558_1741515411476048685_n-247x300.jpg 247w, https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/738667805_1345996504335558_1741515411476048685_n-842x1024.jpg 842w, https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/738667805_1345996504335558_1741515411476048685_n-768x934.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/738667805_1345996504335558_1741515411476048685_n.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 247px) 100vw, 247px\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>If you\u2019ve ever been walking along the beach and looked out to sea, only to spot what appears to be a boat floating in mid-air, you\u2019re not alone.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In fact, the phenomenon of \u2018hovering\u2019 ships is actually more common than you might think, but that doesn\u2019t make seeing it any less spectacular.<\/p>\n<p>There have been a number of seemingly floating boats spotted across the world, from the UK\u2019s\u00a0Cornwall, to Greece and even here in the\u00a0United States.<\/p>\n<p>But before you think you\u2019ve suddenly uncovered the lesser known mode of transportation known as the flying boat, you should know, it\u2019s actually a very clever optical illusion known as Fata Morgana.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-the-flying-dutchman-legend\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Flying Dutchman legend<\/h2>\n<p>Cast your mind back to history class, to one of the world\u2019s most famous ghost ship legends: The Flying Dutchman.<\/p>\n<p>As those who remember the tale will know, the story originates back to Dutch and British sailors during the 17th and 18th centuries, when European ships regularly sailed around a particularly dangerous stretch of ocean around the south of Africa, known as the Cape of Good Hope.<\/p>\n<p>Though the tale has been retold in many forms, the most commonly told story involves a Dutch captain called Hendrick van der Decken, who was trying to sail around the Cape during a nasty storm.<\/p>\n<p>Although his crew begged him to turn the ship back, he refused and for this he was cursed by God to sail the oceans for eternity, meaning the ship could never reach its destination nor return home.<\/p>\n<p>Now, back to the floating ships. Many people believe the legend may have been inspired by Fata Morgana, as these \u2018floating\u2019 ships could easily be mistaken for a ghost ship.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.reddit.com\/r\/confusing_perspective\/comments\/1swbezg\/ships_appear_to_float_over_the_water\/?embed=true&amp;ref_source=embed&amp;ref=share&amp;utm_medium=widgets&amp;utm_source=embedv2&amp;utm_term=23&amp;utm_name=post_embed&amp;embed_host_url=https%3A%2F%2Figvofficial.com%2Fviral%2Fincredible-optical-illusion-makes-boat-appear-like-its-floating-in-the-sky%2F\" width=\"640px\" height=\"740\" scrolling=\"no\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-what-is-a-fata-morgana\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is a Fata Morgana?<\/h2>\n<p>That leads us nicely to what a Fata Morgana actually is. Well, it is actually a highly complex form of superior mirage, which is caused by the way the light bends as it passes through layers of air of differing temperatures.<\/p>\n<p>Though similar to an inferior mirage, like when you see what appears to be water shimmering on a road during a hot day, a Fata Morgana happens when cold, dense air sits underneath warmer air.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuperior 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,\u201d David Braine, a BBC meteorologist, told the\u00a0Guardian\u00a0previously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So how does that translate into seeing flying ships? Well, during a Fata Morgana light will leave the distant object, in this case a ship, and that light passes through several different layers of air of different temperatures.<\/p>\n<p>But, instead of traveling in a straight line, like our brains always presume, the light curves downwards towards Earth. Because our brains can\u2019t compute this, they place the ship somewhere it actually isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>This could be somewhere higher than it actually is, making it appear stretched, upside down or duplicated.<\/p>\n<p>Braine added: \u201cSuperior mirages can produce a few different types of images \u2013 here a distant ship appears to float high above its actual position, but sometimes an object below the horizon can become visible.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-photographers-have-captured-floating-ships\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Photographers have captured floating ships<\/h2>\n<p>On a number of occasions across the world, photographers have managed to capture the phenomenon that is a Fata Morgana, and one person has shared their images on the\u00a0Reddit\u00a0thread\u00a0r\/confusing_perspective.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn some cold winter mornings in flatland northeastern Colorado, you can see Fata Morgana images of a few of the small towns that are over the horizon, hidden most of the time by the curvature of the Earth,\u201d one user commented.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome are stretched vertically, as if there are skyscrapers there (there aren\u2019t), sometimes there are inverted images over right-side-up ones, it\u2019s pretty cool to see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another joked: \u201cFlat earthers\u2019 heads just exploded seeing this,\u201d while a third said: \u201cSimulation glitch, outside loading distance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019ve ever been walking along the beach and looked out to sea, only to spot what appears to be a boat floating in mid-air, you\u2019re not alone. In fact, &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trending","tag-breaking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejoeroganpod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}