I 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.
I’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.
Ah, 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".
I'm always really impressed how he can make a video that sounds like clickbait, but usually go into pretty interesting (and accurate) scientific detail.
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...
Le Monde in France do that too. They even go as far as rewriting portions of their articles after publishing, and partially re-using them under different title(s). Hard to take them seriously when they cry about fake news when their own articles are so malleable.
Like there's really a memo. It's been in so many different news outlets. The current admin is trying to distance from previous use of the word. And if you think I was being serious, then you must not have gotten the memo on sarcasm. You should really declutter your inbox. You seem to be missing a lot of memos.
Perhaps you didn't get the memo - about charity, about not replying with snark or sneering, and about sarcasm often not coming across well in a text-only medium. All have been said here, by dang, frequently.
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
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.
Interestingly though, because of the quotation marks I understood “floating” to mean, as intended, that it looked like the ship was in the air and didn’t even think about the possible ambiguity until I read your comment about it.
under the related articles is the 1990 spill of the tanker "Mega Borg". After reading the first time about "the front fell off", I am given to think that the earlier comedic opportunity has gone sadly missed. [Ed. but I don't know if Scorpio Tankers Inc took the ticker STNG for related reasons...]
You should watch more of these two, Clark and Dawe on YouTube. Behind the humor is biting commentary but a lot of education, I learned a lot through their humorous and pretend political interviews as an American about the Australian government and even the European debt crisis.
John Clark (the one who kept insisting the front fell off) passed away a few years ago.
The submitter posted the title that the article had at the time. Then the BBC changed it there. Then a moderator changed it here. And then a moderator (this one!) marked this subthread—which was stuck to the top of the page, gathering mass and choking out anything interesting—off topic.
I don't fault the comment for that so much as the upvotes, but downweighting top subthreads that are off-topic and/or generic in uninteresting ways is probably the highest-leverage intervention that moderators do here. Unfortunately it requires human intervention, and we don't see all the threads, so if anyone notices an off-topic or generic top subthread before we do, letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com is super helpful.
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.
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.
But again with these 3 ships why is it only the ships themselves being precisely cropped out and not even small remnants of the immediately surrounding water?
They aren’t cropped. They are sitting in fog. The fog is the same color as the sky and there is no backdrop to see through the fog other than the ships. In other words, anything in the fog would be “floating”.
The ship is higher up than the water it is floating on.
You don’t see the keel of the ship, but only parts of it that are above the waterline, and not all of those (corollary: this ship is as good as empty)
Less impressive versions of this would show only the top of the bridge, or the entire ship and some of the water it’s floating on (actually, this image might show some water below the ship. That tiny whitish line below it could be that)
I think the explanation in the article is incorrect. This looks more like a false horizon caused by reflection of the fog on the water, rather than a mirage.
There is fog out past the ship. The water close to the viewer is reflecting the sky, and is blue, while water further out is reflecting the fog. The fog above the horizon blends in with the water reflecting the fog making it hard to see the true horizon line (but it is there in the picture if you look closely). The line where this reflection changes stands out much more strongly and the eye mistakes it for the horizon line.
I think you're right. I've seen Fata Morgana and it looks nothing like this. With atmospheric ducting you get (even more) surreal images, with all kinds of distortion and mirroring. If you've ever driven through salt flats and seen floating, horizontally symmetric mountains, you'll know what I mean. Look more closely at these pictures and you'll see that the fog and the true horizon are indeed visible.
Look close and you can dimly see water surrounding the ship above the horizon too, but it is much more faint than the water which you can see below the horizon.
Anyone 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)
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.
exactly! 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.)
The 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.
BBC Worldwide has always been profit seeking (because it subsidizes the UK taxpayer so the license fee can be lower). If you're not going to see the Ads, then the website also has a right to deny you access.
I use NoScript, and the page loaded fine: if you don't load any JS there is no code to detect an ad blocker :-). (This doesn't always work of course, but it does for many websites).
Oh, and the website loaded in ~500ms with a 50kb of data downloaded. The "full version" loaded > 5MB of data in 10+ seconds.
Sure but lots of pages won't load without javascript so it's double edged. If the javascript won't load it can't download the page via js only mechanisms.
Underfunding 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.
The BBC is not a government news source. It's not even funded by the UK government.[0] It is - by law[1] - required to be completely editorially independent.
The BBC is primarily funded by the TV Licence. The licence is levvied on anyone who watches live TV (any live TV) or uses BBC's SVoD service, BBC iPlayer.
The BBC does operate a commercial subsidiary (BBC Studios), and the main BBC does have other revenue sources like patents owned by BBC R&D and, as you have noted, advertising on bbc.com for people who are outside of the UK.
[0] Well... there are some grants given to the BBC to fund its activities internationally, but those are quite limited in scope and size.
> required to be completely editorially independent.
Although historically it seems very rare that the BBC view on any international politics differs from that of the UK government.
Hopefully that's because both cater to the views of the British public, but it also seems possible that there is some kind of informal backchannel going on...
> Although historically it seems very rare that the BBC view on any international politics differs from that of the UK government.
I know a lot of Britishers that would dispute this version of affairs. To my mind the typical BBC point of view is mildly left-of-centre, well-to-do and urban.
> the typical BBC point of view is mildly left-of-centre
Many people would claim that the BBC is left-of-centre, but if you look at their most prominent/best paid journalists, that is near-objectively not the case.
Andrew Neil was been one of the highest paid BBC journalists 2003-2020, having previously worked for Rupert Murdoch, and has gone on to be Chair [correction: Chairman] of "GB News".
GB News hosts the most right-wing voices in British political discourse, and been compared to Fox News in this respect.
I might concede that the BBC is left-of-centre compared to the average British news media, but given that British news media is exclusively owned by conservative billionaires, I'm not convinced this is a great anchor point.
>The TV license is a tax imposed by the government
The requirement to hold a licence is a statutory one. Likewise, payment of the fee must, by law, be made to the BBC, and enforcement of the licensing regime must be done by (or on behalf of) the BBC.
Thus, it is Parliament, not the government, that imposes the tax.
(Yes, I know that all taxes must have a statutory basis, but this is one that is levied outside of the usual budgetary process using Finance Acts (the passage of which are traditionally considered confidence votes), and the TV Licence is not considered by government as part of its annual budget).
The confusing part is that the government has to maintain the confidence of the house, and is comprised of members of parliament.
Normally the government whips mean that parliament does whatever the government tell it to do, so "holds the government to account" is a laughable statement.
Unlike the US system where the president can easily not have the confidence of the Senate or House (R president, D House, D Senate for example), and appoints his own secretaries from a pool of 300+m people, in the UK, the prime minister appoints ministers from parliament (usually the house of commons but can appoint from house of lords). Technically the PM could make a new lord (like Blair did with Sugar), but it's convoluted, and conventionally the main jobs must go to MPs
Most people think "I like Boris, I vote for him as PM, he runs the country". In the last 5 years this has broken down and parliament has asserted itself more -- this independence was punished at the ballot box in December 2019.
> The confusing part is that the government has to maintain the confidence of the house, and is comprised of members of parliament.
Confidence of the Commons, yes. The government doesn't have a majority in the Lords.
>Normally the government whips mean that parliament does whatever the government tell it to do, so "holds the government to account" is a laughable statement.
To an extent, that's true. The select committee system enables alternate power base within Parliament (especially the Commons) so that independently-minded backbench MPs to scrutinise ministers and other public officials with less interference from the whips.
And over the past 2 parliaments we have seen the rise of the Tory "research groups" - especially the ERG - which have been very influential on the government.
I'm not saying that everything is perfect here, until we ditch the first-past-the-post electoral system everything is still screwed up, but the government does have to listen to Parliament when the latter wants something.
The Tory "Research groups" and the 1918 are influential inside the tory party, but tories always stick together.
Nothing new, Redwood challenged Major in the 90s, and Thatcher lost support of the tory party before that, but various backbenchers might arrange for PMs to leave, but they would never dream of voting against the government in a vote of confidence.
Parliament isn't important, internal politics of the conservative party are important. (And Labour, but less so as (apart from Blair), Labour don't win elections)
The government in the last few years has broken the law time and time again, but nothing happens. They did lose support of parliament, some tory members actually rebelled - including grandees like Ken Clarke. The electorate put them where they belong.
Democracy doesn't really exist in the UK, we have 40+ years of a dysfunctional opposition party that only won thanks to Blair, and the only times that parliament started to assert itself, it was massively punished.
AV wasn't perfect, but it was still far better than FPTP, and the masively rejected it. We can have a government that kills hundreds of thousands of people, flushes billions into the back pockets of tory donors, and we reward them with ever higher approval ratings.
> Thus, it is Parliament, not the government, that imposes the tax.
I think we're encountering the "two countries separated by a common language" thing here.
"Government" (in the UK sense) refers only to the current Prime Minister and assistants, yes? In the US sense, Congress is considered to be part of the "government".
>"Government" (in the UK sense) refers only to the current Prime Minister and assistants, yes? In the US sense, Congress is considered to be part of the "government".
Broadly, yes; "The government" almost exclusively refers to the executive. So, The Crown, ministers, and perhaps the civil service depending on the context.
but the license fee is not imposed by one government after another, it is imposed by law, a law passed by a government and enforced by a sequence of governments thereafter
Yes, in the same way that I would consider a government employee who does not have carte blanche to be part of the government, even when not every decision they make is implemented. The government is the entire apparatus that governs a state, under the en_us definition.
If you changed the funding of RT to be controlled by the Duma, but left all other details intact, would you then say that RT is not government sponsored? To me, that seems like an odd distinction to make. It doesn't capture what most people find salient when talking about government sponsorship of the media. To wit: where is the money -- and therefore power -- coming from? Is it primarily controlled by the people or is it controlled by the rulers?
> The BBC is primarily funded by the TV Licence. The licence is levvied on anyone who watches live TV (any live TV)
Who mandates the payment of a TV License and allocates the funds from it to the BBC? I would assume that's the UK government. These terms may be used differently in the UK, but in the US that would be considered government funded.
> The license is mandated (in certain circumstances), however the funds are collected by the BBC directly.
Interesting. I would still consider that government funded, personally, since it's a mandatory fee imposed by the government and applied to all TV watchers, not just consumers of the BBc. It's certainly a bit more blurry though with the direct collection.
> The US mandates obamacare I believe, does that mean it's government funded?
It depends what you mean. "Obamacare" is an extremely broad term.
Speaking generally: If the government is mandating a fee for some activity, and allocating the funds from said fee to some entity, that entity is government funded. Those fees are defacto taxes.
> Interesting. I would still consider that government funded, personally, since it's a mandatory fee imposed by the government and applied to all TV watchers, not just consumers of the BBc. It's certainly a bit more blurry though with the direct collection.
Not all consumers. No need for a TV license to listen to radio 4, or use the website.
I do have a TV license, but that's mainly because I very occasionally use iplayer - I don't even own a TV aerial.
Some states in America require a dog license and/or a cat license, is that a tax? Is a fishing license a tax? How about a fee to enter a national park?
In at least some states in the US the government mandates you to have car insurance if the car is operated on the public highway. This mandatory fee is collected by private companies and goes to private companies, is it a tax?
> Not all consumers. No need for a TV license to listen to radio 4, or use the website.
I may misunderstand then. In order to watch live TV in the UK you must pay a fee, mandated by the government, and that fee is paid to the BBC? If that's the case, I stand by what I said previously.
> Some states in America require a dog license and/or a cat license, is that a tax? Is a fishing license a tax? How about a fee to enter a national park?
A defacto tax, yes, to all of these. Taking the definition of tax I receive from Google and trimming to the relevant bit: "a compulsory contribution to state revenue ... added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions." The state says "you must have permission to have a dog. If you want permission, you must pay". That's a compulsory contribution added to the cost of some service.
> In at least some states in the US the government mandates you to have car insurance if the car is operated on the public highway. This mandatory fee is collected by private companies and goes to private companies, is it a tax?
That's an interesting question! My knee jerk reaction is no, and I think it is because the insurance provider is actually selling me a service separate and distinct from the activity. That is to say, the BBC is selling "TV" and you're paying a fee. The insurance carrier is selling me a promise that they'll pay me if something should go wrong while I drive, not driving itself.
I fully admit that's a tenuous difference, and I could probably be convinced otherwise. You make a good point.
"a compulsory contribution to state revenue ... added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions"
A license fee, be it for a dog, cat, or television
1) Is not compulsory
2) Is not added to the cost of anything
And in the case of a UK Television license it doesn't go to the state.
I think the problem is getting hung up on the definition of tax, which itself is a rather meaningless debate. The UK government, and indeed parliament, has no say over the BBC budget or income, only the level of the license. If a million more houses decided to license a tv set, BBC income increases by £150m, if a million more houses "cut the cord" and just watch netflix, disney, etc, then BBC income decreases by £150m.
Compare with primary/secondary education, where the government decides how much money to spend on education each year. It could increase it one year, decrease it the next, it's a government funded service.
Trying to define the BBC funding model as "tax for a government department" or "not a tax to an independent company" is itself problematic, the BBC is pretty much unique in its funding model and its control. It's overseen by a board which comprises of zero members of government, although the chair and some non-executive directors are appointed by the government.
EDF, the energy company, is owned by the French state, but I don't think people consider it to be government funded.
Same in Denmark, but the collective opinion is that the structure makes the license a TV tax (a yearly fee you must pay by government mandate as a result of owning a type of device irrespective of use) that goes to the media company, thus making it state funded by that tax, regardless of what the company and government claim.
If it was independent it would have to sell its services on its own, with citizens purchasing the service only if they wished to use it.
In Denmark we're also soon abolishing the license and just making it a normal tax. The structure was pointless and the attempted indirection only angered people, especially as it was expanded to also apply to anyone having internet access over a certain bandwidth.
Furthermore, anything funded by law cannot be truly independent in content either, as it will wish to appease the hand that feeds it.
> Same in Denmark, but the collective opinion is that the structure makes the license a TV tax (a yearly fee you must pay by government mandate as a result of owning a type of device irrespective of use) that goes to the media company, thus making it state funded by that tax, regardless of what the company and government claim.
>If it was independent it would have to sell its services on its own, with citizens purchasing the service only if they wished to use it.
It's similar here. the Office of National Statistics has considered the licence fee a tax rather than a service charge for ~15 years. But I don't think that changes the nature of how the BBC is funded.
>In Denmark we're also soon abolishing the license and just making it a normal tax. The structure was pointless and the attempted indirection only angered people, especially as it was expanded to also apply to anyone having internet access over a certain bandwidth.
There has been a live discussion around the continuation of the licence fee here, too. Although that seems to have - mostly - gone away since the BBC proved its value during the pandemic. I think it helps that the requirement is still fairly narrow here.
The indirection is a feature - having the BBC's funding taken out of the regular budgetary process adds to its independence.
Politically it's a distinct action to change the value of the licence fee.
>Furthermore, anything funded by law cannot be truly independent in content either, as it will wish to appease the hand that feeds it.
To be fair that applies to more than funding. As an example, if trade unions piss the government off too much they can get a majority in the legislature to rewrite industrial relations law.
> a TV tax (a yearly fee you must pay by government mandate as a result of owning a type of device irrespective of use
That's not the case in the UK. You only need a TV license if you use equipment to receive a live TV programme (which is something that falls under the remit of OFCOM[1] - not a livestream of Everyday Astronaut), or if you use BBC's iplayer.
[1] Specifically from 2003 communications act
“television programme service” means any of the following—
* a television broadcasting service;
* a television licensable content service;
* a digital television programme service;
* a restricted television service [consists in the broadcasting of television programmes for a particular establishment or other defined location, or a particular event, in the United Kingdom, which is licensable by OFCOM]
> You only need a TV license if you use equipment to receive a live TV programme
Better than Denmark, but the quoted legal snippet is not restricted to BBC content, but instead applies to reception or any kind of television broadcast irrespective of provider or source (foreign satellite TV being an obvious alternative).
It's a different TV tax than that in Denmark, but absolutely a government mandated tax.
(I am unsure how to interpret the digital television broadcast service aspect. I wonder if they mean something wider than DVB, as the previous points do not use "analogue" as classifier. It's need more of the text to figure that out.)
Probably talking about the anti-tracking stuff built into safari. It's not exactly an adblocker but if they're tracking you and can't (a typical but not exclusive adver tactic) then it could certainly be dropping their javascript/cookies so it's functionally blocking their ads. Same goes for Firefox which bills itself as antitracking rather than anti-ads
If 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.
I'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.
Something 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) 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).
The 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.
I think this is a very fundamental optical illusion with a focus on optical, where air temperature bends light so makes you perceive something different from what it actually is.
It's much more related to optics than direct perception. Your brain is drawing the correct image its received, the light has just been bent so that it doesn't form an accurate representation of what you're trying to see.
It’s not just one person’s brain, right? Everyone who was there would see the same thing. Surely, that means our brains are pretty much wired the same. But I wonder if some people would see the “correct” thing.
What’s also mind blowing is that the camera captures the same thing your brain is interpreting!
This is proven to be a physical illusion because the light sensor (camera) is capturing the same image as the two light sensors in your head (eyes). So no person would see the "correct" thing because the light in the scene is actually rendering this image with minimal interpretive transformations from the mind (this is in contrast to cognitive illusions). Unless there is a person with some extreme sensitivity to the polarization or color of the reflected light but that is probably unlikely.
I don't have the reference handy but I recall reading years ago that certain classic optical illusions simply don't work on people who weren't raised in societies with rectangular housing.
What you describe here is the usual kind of mirage, the one you see when light travels over a hot surface (desert sand, road) during summer.
This particular kind of mirage ("superior mirage", as the author of the picture calls it) works the other way around: light bends away from the cold water surface. So, of I understand it correctly, the horizon appears where it really is whereas the ship appears higher up (contrary to normal mirage where the sky appears to come from the ground).
For what it's worth, the meteorologist specifically called it a mirage, not an optical illusion. Specifically, this is a "superior" mirage, meaning that the object appears to be above its actual location.
A mirage is not an optical illusion in the way that you describe it. The BBC correspondent is the person that called it an optical illusion, not the meteorologist. :)
"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
Id 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
It'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?
The 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?)
Tangentially 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.
This 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.
I 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.
I 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.
There 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.
"...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.
Basically 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]
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.
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.
Yeah, it'd definitely be visible. I imagine it'd be like looking at an air bubble while underwater, in terms of refraction, except that air doesn't have surface tension so the boundary wouldn't look quite the same.
A fata morgana is a special type of superior mirage, where the object is heavily distorted, often to the point of being unrecognizable. The ship in the article kept its shape and is very much recognizable.
I've seen it once and I haven't seen an explanation until now. My wife and I were kayaking on a lake in Northern Sweden and far far away we see a boat that is just moving slowly, lifted up in the air. It was completely calm and we could not hear it (very far away), it was ghostly.
There's a spot where I walk my dog near my house. It follows a power line trail up a hill, and you can turn around and see Denali. For whatever reason, on warm spring days Fata Morgana distortion is fairly common from this spot. I've seen it a few times. At it's most obvious, Denali will appear to be sitting on a pedestal of sheer cliffs, thousands of feet high, surrounded by non existent tabletop mountains and improbable, fantastically shaped spires that would be 10,000 feet ASL if they were real. My cellphone camera doesn't do it justice to though.
No, I just tried posting to imgur and it didn't go so well. It is a white mountain on the horizon, taken with a cell phone. Honestly the pictures don't convey much. If you zoom in, you can see the distortion, though. I'm sure a decent lens could capture it.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadIf instead of layers of warm/cold air there were giant glass lenses hovering over the ocean, the mirage wouldn’t be mysterious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrgKUFbwNf0
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?
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...
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
http://duckcomicsrevue.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-flying-dutch...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulding_Light
[1] https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-fata-morgana-or-mi...
> 'Floating ship' photographed off Cornish coast by walker
https://archive.is/JcBUY
And the current title on BBC is:
> 'Hovering ship' photographed off Cornish coast by walker
https://archive.is/AyAK4
Interestingly though, because of the quotation marks I understood “floating” to mean, as intended, that it looked like the ship was in the air and didn’t even think about the possible ambiguity until I read your comment about it.
As long as the front doesn’t fall off.
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...
John Clark (the one who kept insisting the front fell off) passed away a few years ago.
Who would have guessed...
Imho it s a great album. It also has a 'hovering ship' on its cover: http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_cov...
I don't fault the comment for that so much as the upvotes, but downweighting top subthreads that are off-topic and/or generic in uninteresting ways is probably the highest-leverage intervention that moderators do here. Unfortunately it requires human intervention, and we don't see all the threads, so if anyone notices an off-topic or generic top subthread before we do, letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com is super helpful.
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/today-good-re...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)#/media/F...
1: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fata+morgana&iax=images&ia=images
https://i0.wp.com/www.astropt.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/20...
I can feel my brain contorting a bit.
You don’t see the keel of the ship, but only parts of it that are above the waterline, and not all of those (corollary: this ship is as good as empty)
Less impressive versions of this would show only the top of the bridge, or the entire ship and some of the water it’s floating on (actually, this image might show some water below the ship. That tiny whitish line below it could be that)
There is fog out past the ship. The water close to the viewer is reflecting the sky, and is blue, while water further out is reflecting the fog. The fog above the horizon blends in with the water reflecting the fog making it hard to see the true horizon line (but it is there in the picture if you look closely). The line where this reflection changes stands out much more strongly and the eye mistakes it for the horizon line.
This page has more examples of cases where these two different effects were confused: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-fata-morgana-or-mi...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8
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.
I guess it's shockingly difficult to identify advertorials.
Making a government news source profit seeking is a pretty bad plan, I think.
Oh, and the website loaded in ~500ms with a 50kb of data downloaded. The "full version" loaded > 5MB of data in 10+ seconds.
The BBC is primarily funded by the TV Licence. The licence is levvied on anyone who watches live TV (any live TV) or uses BBC's SVoD service, BBC iPlayer.
The BBC does operate a commercial subsidiary (BBC Studios), and the main BBC does have other revenue sources like patents owned by BBC R&D and, as you have noted, advertising on bbc.com for people who are outside of the UK.
[0] Well... there are some grants given to the BBC to fund its activities internationally, but those are quite limited in scope and size.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/charter
Although historically it seems very rare that the BBC view on any international politics differs from that of the UK government.
Hopefully that's because both cater to the views of the British public, but it also seems possible that there is some kind of informal backchannel going on...
I know a lot of Britishers that would dispute this version of affairs. To my mind the typical BBC point of view is mildly left-of-centre, well-to-do and urban.
sounds accurate.
Many people would claim that the BBC is left-of-centre, but if you look at their most prominent/best paid journalists, that is near-objectively not the case.
Andrew Neil was been one of the highest paid BBC journalists 2003-2020, having previously worked for Rupert Murdoch, and has gone on to be Chair [correction: Chairman] of "GB News".
GB News hosts the most right-wing voices in British political discourse, and been compared to Fox News in this respect.
I might concede that the BBC is left-of-centre compared to the average British news media, but given that British news media is exclusively owned by conservative billionaires, I'm not convinced this is a great anchor point.
Fundamentally the BBC is definitely left wing[0], with enourmous right wing bias[1]
Everyone agrees [2] it's biased.
[0] https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/130814102945-B...
[1] https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/bbc-left-right-wing-b...
[2] https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/bbc-left-right-wing-b...
The requirement to hold a licence is a statutory one. Likewise, payment of the fee must, by law, be made to the BBC, and enforcement of the licensing regime must be done by (or on behalf of) the BBC.
Thus, it is Parliament, not the government, that imposes the tax.
(Yes, I know that all taxes must have a statutory basis, but this is one that is levied outside of the usual budgetary process using Finance Acts (the passage of which are traditionally considered confidence votes), and the TV Licence is not considered by government as part of its annual budget).
The government wields executive power, Parliament legislates and holds the government to account.
Normally the government whips mean that parliament does whatever the government tell it to do, so "holds the government to account" is a laughable statement.
Unlike the US system where the president can easily not have the confidence of the Senate or House (R president, D House, D Senate for example), and appoints his own secretaries from a pool of 300+m people, in the UK, the prime minister appoints ministers from parliament (usually the house of commons but can appoint from house of lords). Technically the PM could make a new lord (like Blair did with Sugar), but it's convoluted, and conventionally the main jobs must go to MPs
Most people think "I like Boris, I vote for him as PM, he runs the country". In the last 5 years this has broken down and parliament has asserted itself more -- this independence was punished at the ballot box in December 2019.
Confidence of the Commons, yes. The government doesn't have a majority in the Lords.
>Normally the government whips mean that parliament does whatever the government tell it to do, so "holds the government to account" is a laughable statement.
To an extent, that's true. The select committee system enables alternate power base within Parliament (especially the Commons) so that independently-minded backbench MPs to scrutinise ministers and other public officials with less interference from the whips.
And over the past 2 parliaments we have seen the rise of the Tory "research groups" - especially the ERG - which have been very influential on the government.
I'm not saying that everything is perfect here, until we ditch the first-past-the-post electoral system everything is still screwed up, but the government does have to listen to Parliament when the latter wants something.
Nothing new, Redwood challenged Major in the 90s, and Thatcher lost support of the tory party before that, but various backbenchers might arrange for PMs to leave, but they would never dream of voting against the government in a vote of confidence.
Parliament isn't important, internal politics of the conservative party are important. (And Labour, but less so as (apart from Blair), Labour don't win elections)
The government in the last few years has broken the law time and time again, but nothing happens. They did lose support of parliament, some tory members actually rebelled - including grandees like Ken Clarke. The electorate put them where they belong.
Democracy doesn't really exist in the UK, we have 40+ years of a dysfunctional opposition party that only won thanks to Blair, and the only times that parliament started to assert itself, it was massively punished.
AV wasn't perfect, but it was still far better than FPTP, and the masively rejected it. We can have a government that kills hundreds of thousands of people, flushes billions into the back pockets of tory donors, and we reward them with ever higher approval ratings.
Correct. In the UK, "government" refers to the ministers currently in power, the "executive branch of the government" in US terms.
I think we're encountering the "two countries separated by a common language" thing here.
"Government" (in the UK sense) refers only to the current Prime Minister and assistants, yes? In the US sense, Congress is considered to be part of the "government".
Broadly, yes; "The government" almost exclusively refers to the executive. So, The Crown, ministers, and perhaps the civil service depending on the context.
Government n. 1. the governing body of a nation, state, or community.
Are opposition legislators considered "members of the government", even if they don't actually, well, govern anything?
If you changed the funding of RT to be controlled by the Duma, but left all other details intact, would you then say that RT is not government sponsored? To me, that seems like an odd distinction to make. It doesn't capture what most people find salient when talking about government sponsorship of the media. To wit: where is the money -- and therefore power -- coming from? Is it primarily controlled by the people or is it controlled by the rulers?
> The BBC is primarily funded by the TV Licence. The licence is levvied on anyone who watches live TV (any live TV)
Who mandates the payment of a TV License and allocates the funds from it to the BBC? I would assume that's the UK government. These terms may be used differently in the UK, but in the US that would be considered government funded.
The US mandates obamacare I believe, does that mean it's government funded?
Interesting. I would still consider that government funded, personally, since it's a mandatory fee imposed by the government and applied to all TV watchers, not just consumers of the BBc. It's certainly a bit more blurry though with the direct collection.
> The US mandates obamacare I believe, does that mean it's government funded?
It depends what you mean. "Obamacare" is an extremely broad term.
Speaking generally: If the government is mandating a fee for some activity, and allocating the funds from said fee to some entity, that entity is government funded. Those fees are defacto taxes.
Not all consumers. No need for a TV license to listen to radio 4, or use the website.
I do have a TV license, but that's mainly because I very occasionally use iplayer - I don't even own a TV aerial.
Some states in America require a dog license and/or a cat license, is that a tax? Is a fishing license a tax? How about a fee to enter a national park?
In at least some states in the US the government mandates you to have car insurance if the car is operated on the public highway. This mandatory fee is collected by private companies and goes to private companies, is it a tax?
I may misunderstand then. In order to watch live TV in the UK you must pay a fee, mandated by the government, and that fee is paid to the BBC? If that's the case, I stand by what I said previously.
> Some states in America require a dog license and/or a cat license, is that a tax? Is a fishing license a tax? How about a fee to enter a national park?
A defacto tax, yes, to all of these. Taking the definition of tax I receive from Google and trimming to the relevant bit: "a compulsory contribution to state revenue ... added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions." The state says "you must have permission to have a dog. If you want permission, you must pay". That's a compulsory contribution added to the cost of some service.
> In at least some states in the US the government mandates you to have car insurance if the car is operated on the public highway. This mandatory fee is collected by private companies and goes to private companies, is it a tax?
That's an interesting question! My knee jerk reaction is no, and I think it is because the insurance provider is actually selling me a service separate and distinct from the activity. That is to say, the BBC is selling "TV" and you're paying a fee. The insurance carrier is selling me a promise that they'll pay me if something should go wrong while I drive, not driving itself.
I fully admit that's a tenuous difference, and I could probably be convinced otherwise. You make a good point.
A license fee, be it for a dog, cat, or television
1) Is not compulsory
2) Is not added to the cost of anything
And in the case of a UK Television license it doesn't go to the state.
I think the problem is getting hung up on the definition of tax, which itself is a rather meaningless debate. The UK government, and indeed parliament, has no say over the BBC budget or income, only the level of the license. If a million more houses decided to license a tv set, BBC income increases by £150m, if a million more houses "cut the cord" and just watch netflix, disney, etc, then BBC income decreases by £150m.
Compare with primary/secondary education, where the government decides how much money to spend on education each year. It could increase it one year, decrease it the next, it's a government funded service.
Trying to define the BBC funding model as "tax for a government department" or "not a tax to an independent company" is itself problematic, the BBC is pretty much unique in its funding model and its control. It's overseen by a board which comprises of zero members of government, although the chair and some non-executive directors are appointed by the government.
EDF, the energy company, is owned by the French state, but I don't think people consider it to be government funded.
If it was independent it would have to sell its services on its own, with citizens purchasing the service only if they wished to use it.
In Denmark we're also soon abolishing the license and just making it a normal tax. The structure was pointless and the attempted indirection only angered people, especially as it was expanded to also apply to anyone having internet access over a certain bandwidth.
Furthermore, anything funded by law cannot be truly independent in content either, as it will wish to appease the hand that feeds it.
>If it was independent it would have to sell its services on its own, with citizens purchasing the service only if they wished to use it.
It's similar here. the Office of National Statistics has considered the licence fee a tax rather than a service charge for ~15 years. But I don't think that changes the nature of how the BBC is funded.
>In Denmark we're also soon abolishing the license and just making it a normal tax. The structure was pointless and the attempted indirection only angered people, especially as it was expanded to also apply to anyone having internet access over a certain bandwidth.
There has been a live discussion around the continuation of the licence fee here, too. Although that seems to have - mostly - gone away since the BBC proved its value during the pandemic. I think it helps that the requirement is still fairly narrow here.
The indirection is a feature - having the BBC's funding taken out of the regular budgetary process adds to its independence.
Politically it's a distinct action to change the value of the licence fee.
>Furthermore, anything funded by law cannot be truly independent in content either, as it will wish to appease the hand that feeds it.
To be fair that applies to more than funding. As an example, if trade unions piss the government off too much they can get a majority in the legislature to rewrite industrial relations law.
of course, other funding sources are available...
That's not the case in the UK. You only need a TV license if you use equipment to receive a live TV programme (which is something that falls under the remit of OFCOM[1] - not a livestream of Everyday Astronaut), or if you use BBC's iplayer.
[1] Specifically from 2003 communications act
Better than Denmark, but the quoted legal snippet is not restricted to BBC content, but instead applies to reception or any kind of television broadcast irrespective of provider or source (foreign satellite TV being an obvious alternative).
It's a different TV tax than that in Denmark, but absolutely a government mandated tax.
(I am unsure how to interpret the digital television broadcast service aspect. I wonder if they mean something wider than DVB, as the previous points do not use "analogue" as classifier. It's need more of the text to figure that out.)
The chairman has worked for the PM and the Chancellor and has donated large sums to the Conservative party.
The BBC Director General is an ex Conservative Party councillor.
The BBC board Chairman and the non-executives are effectively appointed by the government.
Fortean TV was, admittedly, fun but silly fun nonetheless.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion#/media/File:G...
It's much more related to optics than direct perception. Your brain is drawing the correct image its received, the light has just been bent so that it doesn't form an accurate representation of what you're trying to see.
Your eyes are seeing the reflection of the sky on the distant water or fog, making it appear the horizon is closer than it really is.
So it is an optical illusion, as your brain is what is perceiving a horizon where it is not.
What’s also mind blowing is that the camera captures the same thing your brain is interpreting!
This particular kind of mirage ("superior mirage", as the author of the picture calls it) works the other way around: light bends away from the cold water surface. So, of I understand it correctly, the horizon appears where it really is whereas the ship appears higher up (contrary to normal mirage where the sky appears to come from the ground).
I can only recommand to check https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k and then https://metabunk.org/refraction/
A mirage is not an optical illusion in the way that you describe it. The BBC correspondent is the person that called it an optical illusion, not the meteorologist. :)
Is it possible this image is a hoax, or that it was edited to exaggerate the real effect?
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=Jm-iiEis05AC
Then Wikipedia held my hand and said everything was OK and this even has a name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
To me that's the most Men In Black explanation I've ever heard.
Definitely confirms this is aliens.
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-Refra...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=968gVUAY9Mg
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.
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.
https://i.redd.it/jbx7x4a66em21.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_31RYF3p42E/maxresdefault.jpg
http://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/explosion-i...
The vapour cloud which often forms occurs in saturated air as a partial vacuum forms behind the shockwave:
https://frontlinevideos.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/massi...
https://media.tenor.com/images/a6572b4115f67f2aeea90c529d598...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k