By Tim Binnall
A puzzling piece of footage that seems to show a plane frozen in mid-air over San Francisco sparked speculation that the wondrous scene was a "glitch in the matrix," but the odd sight is actually just an optical illusion. The spellbinding video (seen above) reportedly emerged over the weekend after it was posted online by a traveler who gazed out the window of their flight and was stunned by what they saw. The footage subsequently spread like wildfire on social media with people offering all manner of theories as to what was unfolding in the sky over the city.
While the most predominant suggestion was that the footage captured a proverbial "glitch in the matrix," other imaginative observers quickly pointed the finger at, of course, aliens. However, it turns out that both fantastic theories are incorrect as the cause of the curious sight was merely an optical illusion known as the parallax effect. The phenomenon occurs when an individual observes an object that is traveling at the same relative speed as themselves, which causes it to look stationary.