Fata Morgana—Boats That Float In The Air

In this video I show you how it is possible for a boat to float in the air. I talk about Fata Morgana and Looming. Then I show you a real life example that you can do at home that bends light in this same way.

[TheActionLab]

Had to fly to Florida to find some ghost ships for this one, sorry about the bad audio!

[todaywefly]

I once sent a couple of years on a property that was completely surrounded by flat country for 30 miles in every direction. Imagine my surprise one morning to wake up to hills, complete with random trees, across the entire horizon. Even more intriguing was that as I watched over 20 minutes it slowly sank into oblivion. Only ever saw it the once but apparently it used to occur a lot.

[GeyzsonKristoffer]

Action lab: “Recently”
YouTube: 10 years ago

[buelliganx]

I saw this one when I was flying up to Lake Erie in a small airplane, pretty cool effect and it taught me a valuable lesson about how deceiving your senses can be when you're piloting an aircraft

[kutsen]

This also explains the Flying Dutchman. Especially if sailors saw a ship slowly loom into view, upside down and floating over the water, only to slowly fade out of existence again. If you didn't know about this phenomenon, it would be easy to be unnerved, especially if the mate starts talking ghost stories, about a ship a hundred years ago that never made it back to port because of a bad storm.

[PlasmaChannel]

This was a really great demonstration, and I’d never heard of the image flipping entirely. Now, I’ll sit back with my popcorn and wait for the flat earth comments 🙃

[CaptainSlow]

Nahh that boat is just asserting dominance over other boats

[Commenter]

Captain: I am going to name my ship Dinnerbone

Dinnerbone: 5:05

[RavenLuni]

Everyone: "whatever floats your boat"
Action Lab: "Refraction"

[Darshil-P]

I'm Impressed by the Explanation you came up with but actually, you just have to increase your render distance. The far away Ocean is not rendered but the entities are therefore they seem as if they are floating!
Such phenomena are very common in Minecraft.
If you already have your render distance maxed out then you simply have to wait few seconds for it to load.

[mauriziomaselli]

Good video. Just a small correction: at minute 3:38 you see the edge of the box bent downwards. That’s actually light bent upwards at the interface between glass and air. You must be careful how you use that box, as it doesn’t always reproduce the atmosphere as we see it. We are like inside the box, and effects due to the interface between the box and the air outside can be misleading.

[AaronGRandall]

This is one of those great examples of why the Earth is NOT flat. Great video! Keep it up!

[DANGJOS]

@The Action Lab The videos you showed at 1:08 are actually examples of inferior mirage, which is by far the most common type of mirage over water. It's caused by water being significantly warmer than the air above it. You can tell because there's an inverted image below the ship. The reflection of the sky in the water makes it look like the ships are floating above the water. The Fata Morgana mirages, and the non-mirage looming, is rarer, and occurs over water that is colder than the air. They're more common in California.

[suleimanshaba]

"you can't always trust your eyes". So easy to understand yet many people can't understand. This video really explains how the optics work on earth. 3:37 to 4:00 tells a lot.

[OhThatEdit]

Awesome! Reflections are pretty cool. You can also do this with gasses ;o

[DANGJOS]

I've done many at home experiments with liquid nitrogen and butane to show this effect on a smaller scale. It's really cool! You can get mirages and/or looming.

[xtramaze-musicmaster]

Alternative title: Minecraft glitches in real life

[PK-tsjy]

Best explanation of the phenomenon I’ve ever seen on the internet. Kudos!

[oldally]

"So *recently* there was a *picture* of a floating boat in the internet.*

**shows a video from 2010**

[shashank]

He never clickbaits us and that's why I love him