About mirages know everything and nothing.On the one hand, it is difficult to find someone who at least once in my life seen a mirage would be the easiest - blue lake on a hot highway.Optics lucidly, with drawings and claims, will talk about this phenomenon.On the other - Thousands of people watched the sky is literally hanging in the city, whimsical castles and even entire armies, but there has been no explanation from the experts to this natural phenomenon.Learn mirages almost impossible, because they do not come to order.Their hostess, Fata Morgana, always original and unpredictable.
People saw mirages since ancient times, as there are numerous legends.Especially colorful stories about the mirage of Palestine from the Crusaders left, which, however, nobody really believed.Painfully loved to invent knights of the wonders of the East.Start of scientific observation of the optical focus of this coincided with the appearance of the ship's log, which records all unusual detail.Open ancient book "day-notes on the voyage to the northern whale fishery, containing research and gaining on the east coast of Greenland."It talks about the big city, which is observed in the summer of 1820 the commander of the ship, "Baffin", full of castles and temples, very similar to the ancient structure.Sailor details sketched this wonderful phenomenon, but evidence later, of course, were not confirmed.
Later, in 1840, the inhabitants of a small island to the north of England saw in the sky beautiful white building.Since nothing like this in their homeland they were not, people thought it was a confirmation tales of Finnish people living in Crystal City.The vision of a distant land again after 17 years and was in the air for three hours.But
champion mirages have long recognized the distant cold Alaska.The more cold, the clearer and more beautiful there in her sky vision.Permanently fix the appearance of mirages in those regions began only in the XIX century.So, in 1889, a local resident walking near the mountain Mount Fairweather, that the south-east of the peninsula, watching the silhouette of a big city - with skyscrapers, tall towers and steeples, churches, like the mosque.Source mirage could be thousands of kilometers away from Alaska.
way, Alaska, and to this day remains one of the best places in the world for the emergence of mirages.There's even created a special society for the study of natural optical phenomena, which publishes the journal observations of mirages, and tourists from Canada and the United States carry on buses to admire as of the blue ocean horizon straight from the depths of the mountains rise, and then knows where disappearing.
But in order to see a real mirage, it is not necessary to go to Alaska.If a hot summer day stand on the road against the sun, we can see how the roadway is 2-3 kilometers away from us as if immersed in the brilliant sunshine on the lake.Let's try to get closer to the "lake" - is postponed, and no matter how much we go towards it, it will always be in the distance.These are mirages in ancient times driven to despair travelers languishing in the heat and thirst.In the literature, this type of mirage called oasis, or a lake, and not prone to the lyrics physicists call its bottom, and now we understand why.
Nature lake mirage studied in detail.The sun's rays heating up the soil, which is heated by the lower layer of air.He, in turn, rushes up, immediately replaced by the new, which is heated up and flows away.Light rays always bend from the warm side of the layers in colder.In physics, this phenomenon is called refraction and known since Ptolemy.Rays of light from the sky near the horizon, toward the ground, bent over her and inclined upward to reach the bottom of our eyes, as if reflecting on something above the ground.We see, of course, a piece of blue sky, just below the point where it actually is.And the effect of gloss and overflows caused by non-uniform flow of warm air rising from a hot surface.
same mirages - castles, towns and mountains - with which we began the story, though diverse lake, but in general are similar to them in explaining.Scientists call them the upper mirages.In the "meteorology" Aristotle is a typical example of how the inhabitants of Syracuse is sometimes seen in a few hours ashore mainland Italy, although it 150 km.Similar phenomena are also caused by the redistribution of warm and cold layers of air.The reduction of its density with altitude "forcing" the rays reflected from objects that are low on the horizon, bent down.And the laws of optics are such that we always see the object in the direction of the last segment of the path of the light beam.Therefore, atmospheric refraction lifts objects that allows you to look beyond the horizon line.If there is a lower and upper mirage, why not be the side?Amazing effects can often be seen in well-heated walls of buildings."Approaching the wall of the fort, made of sandstone, I suddenly noticed that it shone like a mirror, and it reflected and dusty palm trees and camels humps taschivshie to our guns" - describes his impressions from Tunisia French officer Lazar Pogyu.A Dutch astronomer and popularizer of science Marseille Minnart offered such an optical trick, "Stand at the long wall at arm's length and look at the shiny metal object that your friend is gradually approaching the wall at the other end.When the subject will be a few centimeters away from the wall, its contours will be distorted, and you'll see it reflected on the wall as if it were a mirror.In a very hot day, images can even be two. "The nature of this mirage is the same as that of the lake.Of course, the light rays are not reflected from the wall and from the adjoining layers hotter air.
to the next, the most mysterious kind of mirage, called Fata Morgana, convincing recognized explanation has yet been found.The name they received in honor of the heroine of the Breton epic Fata Morgana, Italian for "fairy Morgana."It is said that she, half-sister of King Arthur, Lancelot spurned lover, moved by grief at the bottom of the sea, at the Crystal Palace, and since then deceives navigators ghostly visions.Here is an example of documented Fata Morgana, that is recorded by eyewitnesses, not to believe that we have no reason.April 3, 1900 drills - defense Bloemfontein - seen in the sky fighting the orders of the British army, though so clearly that it was possible to distinguish between the buttons of red-coated officers.This was taken as a bad omen.Two days later the capital of the Orange republic surrendered.
By Fata Morgana, no doubt, can be attributed to numerous "flying Dutchmen", which still sees sailors.At 11 am on December 10, 1941 a team of British transport "vendor", located near the Maldives, noticed a burning ship on the horizon."Vendor" went to the rescue of persons in distress, but an hour later the burning ship keeled over on its side and sank."Vendor" went up to the proposed site of the death of the ship, but despite a thorough search, found not just any debris, and even oil stains.In the port of destination in India, the commander of "vendor" has learned that at the very moment when his team watched the tragedy sank the cruiser "Repulse" Attacked by Japanese torpedo far from Ceylon.The distance between the ships at the time was 900 kilometers.
How did the scientists are trying to explain such a phenomenon?
If, for example, follow the theory Mach-Fraser, then the occurrence veil Morgan necessary that the temperature dependence of the height was linear.First, the temperature rises with altitude, but with a certain level of its growth rate decreases.Such a temperature profile, but with a steeper "broken", scientists call an air lens.The existence of such an effect is justified by meteorologists, but argued that he was the cause of Fatamorgana sooner.
known for certain about the mirage ghost.Here is how this effect the British meteorologist Carolina Botley."On a hot August day in 1962 I was picking flowers.Suddenly, a few meters away, I saw a figure, she trembled and swayed, was pretty solid.I am horrified dropped a bouquet of flowers and only then noticed that the ghost was also a bouquet of flowers, and he, too, dropped it.It was my own reflection.I distinguish in detail all the nuances, the details, the color of the body as if she saw herself in the mirror. "Despite but what Miss Botley known throughout America as an expert on weather conditions, one would think that at this time we are certainly talking about hallucinations.But in 1965, an American tourist photographed like a ghost.Since then, a dozen photos mirazheyprizrakov even one amateur video.Such phenomena usually occur in the morning on a hot day when the ground is still steaming.Scientists believe that ghosts are not caused by the refraction of light and reflection on a rare fog.But surely talk about "mechanisms" that create mirazhiprizraki, scientists can not yet.Here is more guesswork than grounded theory.
Photo source: n-lo.ru
Articles Source: n-lo.ru
