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ship floating in the clouds off cornwall

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leaves man baffled

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or does it this uh story in cornwall

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live is something that crops up from

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time to time we see very similar stories

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to this

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in the media over the years and

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we see what looks like a ship

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floating above the horizon and this

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version of the story in cornwall live

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they actually talk to the guy who took

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the photograph and he

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has in fact seen the phenomenon before

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and he

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explains what he does now he was

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actually there and he had the wider view

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he could see the whole context and he

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could tell

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kind of where the ship was relative to

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the the actual horizon

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and you can see what was actually going

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on and he explains that what's actually

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actually happening here is that uh

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due to the similar coloring of the sea

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and sky the large vessel appears to be

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sitting amongst the clouds

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and that's what's actually happening

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here and we we know this because this is

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the type of thing that we've seen

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many times before and a lot of the times

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you get better quality photos that are a

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bit wider and you can actually adjust

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the contrast and you can see that what's

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underneath the ship here isn't

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is in fact just the sea and there's

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quite a few examples like this one here

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of a boat that appears uh at a distance

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to be floating above the horizon here

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but in fact this

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region here is in fact just just the sea

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just the the ocean and it's just

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a change in the color which is possible

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to do with the reflection of the clouds

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possibly to do with like a bit of haze

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over the ocean but basically there's

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there's nothing um

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nothing weird going on here other than a

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bit of an optical illusion because the

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surface of the sea

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is blending in with the sky and we see

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this uh in in bunch of

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other images here here's a classic one

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here a boat appears to be

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floating up above the horizon but

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again it's the same type of thing it's

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just this is the area of the sea that

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kind of blends in with

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with the sky and you actually see these

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these real horizons if you

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magnify the uh the contrast and you'll

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see a little line where the actual

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horizon is

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and here's the the one we're looking at

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here you can actually see

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that right here the real horizon and the

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and what's happened with this is of

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course the the media picks it up and

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because it looks quite like an amazing

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image

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and they go with it being a mirage which

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it

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unfortunately a lot of meteorologists

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will say it's a mirage they'll say

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things like it's a superior mirage

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because it's above the horizon meaning

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superior inferior image below the

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horizon

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and if we we go to google and we type in

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um a superior mirage

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and we look at the the images we'll see

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what an actual superior mirage looks

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like it looks like something like this

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it's uh very kind of distorted and

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there's like a couple of things one on

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top of the other

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it's all stretched out but we'll also

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see things like this

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this uh this this image here this again

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is

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horizon you can magnify and see the real

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horizon here

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and people think it's a superior mirage

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it's not we see the same thing here's

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the classic examples here is this

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another one not a superior mirage

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this over here this is a superior mirage

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not a superior mirage yes a superior

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mirage

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and you also see fatter morganas now

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a big part of the problem here are these

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uh helpful little diagrams which

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supposedly show

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a superior mirage but they don't

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actually show a superior mirage they

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show a phenomena called

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looming where an object is raised up

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without being

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inverted with a superior mirage you're

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actually seeing something that is uh

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flips upside down

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the two very very different things but

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with with looming what we see here

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if that was what was going on we would

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actually see the water underneath the

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boat

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and we don't see that so we know it's

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not looming we know it's not

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a superior mirage because it's not

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upside down this is a superior mirage

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you can see the image is upside down

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it's inverted

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but very similar diagrams supposedly

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show

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a superior mirage but they're actually

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showing looming something completely

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different

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if you want to understand more about

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what a superior mirage is and what an

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inferior mirage is and why this isn't

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either of those two things

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what i recommend you do is go to

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metabunk.org refraction

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and this is something i wrote a couple

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of years ago it's a refraction simulator

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and we have kind of a magnify side view

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here

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which we can edit

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and then we have the resultant image

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and what we can do is we can create a

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temperature profile we can do things

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like make

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the surface of the water colder and then

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make the

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gradient steeper and we can do you know

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all kinds of things

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and move it around and we can see the

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various different optical effects that

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you can get

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now if you go down here i have a bunch

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of presets

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and it starts out at oil tanker one

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which is just just the normal

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view you might expect on a regular day

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and if we go to the second one though

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this is the superior mirage

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and inversion and as you can see it kind

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of looks like those examples that we saw

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before it's a

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uh inverted version of the ship above

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the normal ship and this is a a superior

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mirage because there's a mirage above

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the actual ship

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next one is the inferior mirage also

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known as the hot road effect and you see

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this on hot roads it looks like a pool

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of water

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on the road above you in front of you

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reflecting the sky

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and this is what that looks like now

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you can play around with these curves

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and you can understand what's going on

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here if you look at this curve here

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and you look at this side view here it

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shows you all the rays of light and

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where they go when something

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is hot

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the air is less dense which means that

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the air will bend towards the more dense

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air so when

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something is light beam is coming down

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it will bend up and you get this kind of

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inversion here it gives you essentially

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just a mirror

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in in the water if i make it less

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dramatic you get less and less of an

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effect

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and eventually i'll just go back down to

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a bit of a distortion and then down to

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normal

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but you know this this effect here this

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uh inferior mirage

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is not what we're seeing in in these

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photos

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in the hovering ships because if it was

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an inferior mirage you would see

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a inverted ship underneath this ship

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because we're seeing

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if you know in an inferior mirage we see

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reflection of the sky but we also see

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reflections of things like

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cars and buildings uh in in these

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pools of of of water that appear on the

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road

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and we don't see that here it's just

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simply blending in with the sky behind

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and number four is lofting now lofting

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is when just simply something is raised

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up and this is often mistaken for

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an inferior mirage a superior mirage

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because

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it's above where it should be but in

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fact uh

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everything you'd look at pretty much is

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being lofted because the natural state

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of the atmosphere is to be more dense

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lower down and so

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it generally will raise things up a

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little bit now when you've got

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a rather dramatic

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cooling down or a lower level you get

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this effect here

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where the light rays bend around

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the the curve of the earth

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and you will see further than you will

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normally see what you can do here is you

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can turn this

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turn refraction on and off to see what

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it would look like if there was no

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atmospheric refraction all the rays go

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straight and you can see the ship is

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just down below the horizon

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turn refraction back on and it pops up

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above because you've got this this

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curving effect

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normally the atmosphere looks more like

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this and you've just got a simple

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temperature gradient and you can just

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see a little bit of

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bit more of the ship but

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with uh the more extreme thing we have

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here you see quite a lot

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of it it's probably gonna be more like

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uh like this eventually

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so we have cold water lower down which

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allows you to see

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around this bit and then the higher up

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bits are fairly straight

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this is kind of fun to play around with

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uh number five is fatter morgana which

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is just

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you know it's a more complicated uh

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series of

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uh mirages and yeah i don't think we

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even need this one here

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uh it's kind of like uh weird inversions

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giving various effects and you can move

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it around and you can see

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see what happens if there's different uh

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different sets of temperatures

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temperature gradients in the air but