A bizarre image has surfaced online showing a cruise ship appearing to fly in the skies over the water.
The huge liner sits well above the sea in the mind-blowing image, which was captured from the shoreline.
Posted on Imgur, the photo has been over 164,000 times as the internet tries to solve the puzzle.
One user wrote: “Gravity is a lie, created by Nasa!”
Another shared: “That’s just the modern Flying Dutchman.”
But not all is as it seems in the jaw-dropping picture.
The image is believed to be an example of a phenomenon called fata morgana.
Visible on land or sea, fata morgana involves the optical distortion and inversion of distant objects such as boats.
The same phenomenon has been used to explain a bizarre floating city in the skies above China.
Residents and tourists alike have witnessed the jaw-dropping appearance of skyscrapers poking out of the clouds.
Fata morgana’s optical distortions can resemble skyscrapers because the images become stacked, when rays of light bend as they pass through air of different temperatures such as in a heat haze.
Expert Suryanarayana Maddu explained to Quora: “Our brain assumes that light travels in a straight paths, so when it bends, we think the object is where it would be if the light’s path runs straight.
“In this case, light reflected from the skyscrapers is bent downward as it passes through the colder, denser air.
“Because the brain puts the object where it would be if the light traveled a straight path, the distant skyscrapers appear higher than they actually are.”
Some have claimed fata morgana is also the explanation for the myth of the Flying Dutchman, a legendary ghost ship from the 17th century that can never make port.
It’s believed to have originated from the golden age of the Dutch East India Company.
