Thread: Film: How not to be a marksman

Could be a myriad of things couldn't it. I bet the actual answer would surprise a lot of us.

I've heard that extreme cold mixed with warmer air currents can actually warp light and make objects appear where they aren't. I trolled this off some news site -

"Cold air is denser than warm air and has therefore a greater refractive index. As light passes from colder air across a sharp boundary to significantly warmer air, the light rays bend away from the direction of the temperature gradient. When light rays pass from hotter to colder, they bend toward the direction of the gradient. If the air near the ground is warmer than that higher up, the light ray bends in a concave, upward trajectory.

Once the ray reaches the viewer's eye, the visual cortex interprets it as if it traces back along a perfectly straight "line of sight". This line is however at a tangent to the path the ray takes at the point it reaches the eye. The result is that an "inferior image" of the sky above appears on the ground. The viewer may incorrectly interpret this sight as water which is reflecting the sky, which is, to the brain, a more reasonable and common occurrence."

All it would have taken is the air on the ground to be much colder than the air up a couple of meters and there you go.