By Tim Binnall
A father and son walking along a beach in England were left scratching their heads when they looked out at the ocean and saw what appeared to be a sizeable ship floating over the water. The weird scene was reportedly spotted by David Morris and his son, who shares the same name, during a visit to the tiny coastal community of Gillan. "We were amazed and very baffled," the younger man said of the puzzling floating vessel that had caught their eye.
At the risk of disappointing those who may be imagining that the duo stumbled upon a clandestine British military test akin to the Philadelphia Experiment, the fantastic scene is actually an optical illusion specifically called a 'superior mirage' along the lines of the Fata Morgana phenomenon which often spawns headlines when 'cloud cities', 'ghost ships,' and other inexplicable aerial sights are spotted. The effect is created when a temperature inversion of warm air over cold air causes the light to refract in such a way that it produces seemingly out-of-this-world reflections of otherwise normal objects like ships and buildings.