Plane Appears to Pause Mid-Air in Viral Optical Illusion

Footage of a plane traveling into San Fransico, California, on October 12, has gone viral due to an optical illusion that causes the aircraft to seemingly defy the laws of physics.

Video taken by William Manidis from the window of a nearby plane shows an aircraft appearing to hover stationary in the air. The footage has been viewed nearly 30 million times since Manidis posted it to X.

The optical illusion Manidis witnessed is called the parallax effect, a type of visual illusion in which the position of an object in three-dimensional space appears to change, due to a shift in the position of the observer. Credit: William Manidis via Storyful

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