Are There Straight Lines in Nature?
Puzzler! And does it matter?
I’m not sure what caused this effect.
No trick photography or special effects. I just stepped out my front door at dawn with my little Canon Point and Click (G7X), then I pointed and I clicked.
The blue line is clearly the horizon, but the grey line, immediately above it, is a little more puzzling. It is likely to be a fog or a bank of clouds. But why does the top grey line appear to be straight? In my experience, neither clouds nor fogs ever have straight edges.
Still ‘appearances’ are almost always deceiving. As we all know, straight does not always mean straight, and even the horizon line is in reality curved.
If you are seriously interested in this question, try Quora here or here or here. (This is Quora at its best by the way, no sign of ‘Be Nice Be Respectful’ Reminders! Because at least so far they have not been needed.) Quora provides a plenitude of answers to my puzzler.
I raise this question, not from any great need to know the answer, rather from a sense of joy (or at least pleaure) that comes from briefly thinking about a matter of no significance. From briefly thinking about something other than Climate Change, Nuclear War, or Pandemics!
And finally to give me a reason to share the the beauty of the morning sunrise where I live.
Where was this picture taken? On the coast of the Southern Ocean100 K SW of Melbourne in the lower right quadrant of Australia. See below:
