It’s likely that you would be somewhat frightened if you witnessed a jet hovering in midair.
Something must have gone wrong because planes aren’t designed to do that; they’re not like helicopters.
Hold on tight, because you must watch this startling video that is going viral.
The video, which received 36.8K votes in a single day, was uploaded to the subreddit r/Damnthatsinteresting and depicts a jet that appears to be stuck in midair over San Francisco.
“Parallax effect” is the straightforward caption that Redditor Silent-Lobster7854 used while posting it, but what does that actually mean?
‘Parallax’ is defined by Merriam-Webster as “The apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object.”
Therefore, even though the plane appears to be stationary, this is an optical illusion. Another plane racing by is filming it, and because of the parallax effect, the first plane appears to be trapped.
One Redditor broke it down underneath the video: “The change in observers angle coupled with different speeds of both planes is deceiving depth perception.”
“This is the same reason when trees further away don’t move as far as those closer to the train when looking out the window.”
Despite the fact that there is a valid scientific explanation for this, jokes have nevertheless been made in the comments section.
Additionally, everyone is making the same joke, which is that this is a video game rather than real life.
“The pilot had to pause his game,” one Redditor quipped, while another said, “Pilot’s mom said dinner is ready and to pause the game.”
And others are getting even weirder with it, commenting: “Ok so what you’re saying is… aliens?” to which another replied, “I’m not saying it was aliens… but it was aliens.”
While one movie comparison is coming up an awful lot: “I know a glitch in the Matrix when I see one,” a Redditor commented.
Conspiracy theories aside, sometimes it’s just nice to see somewhere you recognize go viral: “Shout out to the Bay Area! That’s the San Mateo bridge.”
