Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/17/freaky-orb-with-mouth-caught-on-video-over-lake-resembles-pac-man.html
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Water drone?
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Looks like an example of a “Fata Morgana” mirage creating the illusion of a partially mirrored object appearing to float above the surface of the water. It’s a pretty well documented phenomenon created when light is distorted through thermal inversion layers. You can find photos of ships appearing to float above the horizon and all kinds of other optical weirdness created by this effect.
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hah (man you’re a fast typist!) and here i was trying to include a convincing image. well done!
just add one brightly reflected arc and then move forward to make the reflection ‘chomp’ up/down
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Here’s a pretty famous example from just last month!
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If you look closely enough you can see Party God is the one driving the bouncing speedboat distorted through the Fata Morgana effect… 
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Why hasn’t anyone considered the possibility that Audrey II just might be out for a swim?
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I’ve long believed that The Langoliers is both the worst Stephen King movie and the worst apocalyptic scenario.
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The symmetry of the “mouth” gives it away.
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Even a brain-dead flat earther (but I repeat myself…) could tell you that this is a mirage.
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Is it not just boat, being reflected in the water and as it rises up out of the water on wave its black hull is show and looks like a mouth opening and closing as it sinks back down after each wave, i mean the long the video goes on the more boat like it looks…
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I think it’s even simpler. It’s a white motorboat, reflected either in calm water or hot air near the surface of the water, bobbing up and down as it speeds along heading slightly into the camera. The upper half is the boat, the lower half its reflection, the “mouth” is the keel, painted darker than the rest. And you can see the background is also mirrored along the same line. a “Fata Morgana” would show an upside-down image of the boat ABOVE it. This looks like a plain reflection, or maybe a simple mirage, but over water.
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oh FFS, stop with UFO/cryptid nonsense.
It’s an identified floating object - a small cabin cruiser on plane running near the opposite shore and an upside down reflection underneath with some heat/mist distortion just above the water. Which would have been obvious if the person shooting had focused on infinity instead of the waves between them and the boat.
The reflection zone keeps you from seeing the dark lower hull of the boat and you mostly only see the cabin. You can see the boat porpoise as it hits waves and even see the water splash up behind. This is stupid common when looking at boats in the distance with binocs when you’re out on the water.
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