This is an actual photo of a boat that seems to be floating in the air. The image was not tweaked with photoshopping, and it was not taken from a strange angle in order to create the illusion. It even has a name. It’s called the Fata Morgana, named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay. Italian shipman superstitiously believed it was she who lured sailors to their deaths by tricking them with a mirage of land.
Fata Morgana is a rare phenomenon that occurs when there is an inversion layer. Warm air is usually nearest to the Earth. When it inverts and colder air is close to the sea, it causes the atmospheric illusion. It’s rare because when the inversion layers occur, wind generally mixes the air, and no effect is noticed.
What Kind of Swimming Pool Is This?
Why do the people inside look totally dry? And how does that man’s hat stay on? Shouldn’t their hair be floating upward? Do we see someone using their phone? Mystery solved! This swimming pool is actually a very special pool that contains no water.
It’s an art installation at the 21st Century of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. There is a hallway and a door to enter the pool from the bottom, while a glass plate covers the surface of the pool with a foot of water on top, giving the impression of a filled pool. Now all they need is a pretend swimmer at the top.
An Impossible Repair Job
A clever Reddit user captured this scene at just the right angle to drive us bonkers. It looks like these repairmen are defying the laws of physics by reaching across to this side of the bridge from the distance of the street, where their lift vehicle is parked. How could their lift stretch so far?
Well, for starters, their lift has horizontal motion as well as vertical. So, the reality is those workers are repairing the bridge from where their vehicle is parked. As a bonus optical illusion, check out that orange safety cone that seems to levitate above the worker on the ground.
Hall of Confusion
Anyone susceptible to motion sickness may want to steer clear of this hallway! The walls and the floor appear to be curving in and bending out. It looks like the walls are draped with a fabric that has a lined pattern. But none of this is true.
What you are looking at is an installment from an artist’s exhibit. Austrian psychedelic artist Peter Kogler uses his art to create mind-bending spaces out of ordinary rooms. This particular work was on display in 2016 at the ING Art Center in Brussels. We just hope that this room is not a bathroom by chance, because people are going to have a hard time aiming like that.
Heavenly Day
How this image is not a painting by French artist René Magritte is beyond us. It is divinely enchanting, mysteriously lovely, and it questions reality. That is a dock, and it is floating in the sky. The peaceful grassy bank is an ideal place to spend the day.
But truly, what a lake! The water is so still that it reflects the sky just like a mirror. It almost makes you think the image is about to zoom out at any minute and reveal the Dreamworks logo animation with that man fishing on the moon. It’s prettier than life itself.