A video with a remarkable optical illusion went viral on social networks. Passenger William Madinis caught sight of another plane flying in the same direction not far from them on a plane heading to the San Francisco airport. However, due to a physical phenomenon, in the footage, the second plane appears to be floating in the air and not moving at all.
A video of a remarkable real-life optical illusion has gone viral on social media. | Video: Reddit/StrangeEarth
Madinis took the video on Thursday, October 12, and it has since gone viral on social media, garnering tens of millions of views. Users wonder how it is possible that the plane is just “standing” in the air in the video. “That plane just stopped in time. Somebody check if it’s still stuck,” one commenter joked on Reddit. “I think it’s a bug in the Matrix,” added another user on social network X, formerly Twitter.
But in reality, the plane does not defy the laws of physics, as many commentators believed. This is the so-called parallax effect, in which the perceptual framework changes, explains the British newspaper The Daily Mail. In this visual illusion, the position of an object in three-dimensional space changes due to a change in the observer’s point of view. Therefore, from certain places, the plane appears to be motionless.
According to the server, residents living near the international airport in San Francisco regularly encounter this phenomenon. There, in good weather conditions, the planes approach to land in parallel runways, closely spaced next to each other.
“As someone who lives in the area and drives over that bridge all the time, I’m sure hundreds or thousands of people have stopped on it and noticed a plane just hovering in the air above them,” said one user on the network X. “I live right next to the airport, they keep arriving there so slowly. It seems impossible, but it’s not,” added another.
“All is not as it seems.” The optical illusion will confuse your senses, it has become a hit
Do the white dots move in a straight line or in a circle? The optical illusion caught the attention of over a million people on the networks | Video: Twitter/Amazing Physics