This Sight on Hampton Beach in New Hampshire Was Unearthly

U Local New Hampshire is one of my favorite groups on Facebook. It has everything from adorable babies to gorgeous sunrises over lake Winnipesaukee, a field of vibrant lupines in bloom, and everything in between. It's a nice, positive corner of the internet, and we need that these days.

A few weeks ago, Travis Braxton shared a photo to U Local New Hampshire with the caption, "What do you make of this on Hampton beach yesterday?" It should be noted that it was one of those days where the temperature was lingering somewhere around 93. As we say in these parts, "it was wicked hot".

Great question, Travis! I have never seen anything like that in my life. What the heck am I even looking at? If it weren't prime tanning hours  (PTH as I like to call it) I might be tempted to pack up my stuff and call it a day out of fear of an alien invasion. I watched the movie Signs recently, and it shows.

Others like me thought the only explanation must be sci-fi related. That made the comments section a particularly entertaining place. Some of my favorite comments include:

A tear in the fabric of reality, revealing a parallel dimension – Kyle

 

Alien ship that is uncloaked. – Dennis

I also kept seeing the word "refraction" come up. I must have missed that day in 6th grade science class (sorry, Mrs. Williams!). While I've definitely heard the word, I couldn't even begin to define it.

Thankfully, a knowledgeable bloke named Don Taylor decided to give the folks following this post a science lesson, and I'm so glad he did.

Don said,

That happens when the water is cold and the temperature of the air is hot. It is the opposite when you look down paved road and the surface is hot or hotter than the air and it looks like water.

So it was a mirage (aka nature's optical illusion) caused by refraction. According to Britannica,

A mirage is the deceptive appearance of a distant object or objects caused by the bending of light rays (refraction) in layers of air of varying density.

The website Tree Hugger named this particular mirage "Fata Morgana"  The site goes on to explain that the illusion occurs above the horizon on oceans, particularly in polar regions. It makes distant objects (such as another ship or the shoreline) appear to be floating in the sky. That's exactly what is happening here!

The air near the ocean’s surface is sometimes cooled by the water, so the temperature is warmer at higher altitudes. Light passes through hot air more easily, so it reaches the eyes of a far-off viewer after refracting above the cooler air. The viewer’s brain expects light to travel in a straight line, and perceives that the far-off object is floating above the surface.

Have you ever seen a sight like this? What other mirages have you seen?