Re:Axios-Ipsos poll: Most Americans say Covid is no longer a...
by MatteoFrigo on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @09:47PM
(#31010363)
In fact, the sun at sunset which appears to be above the horizon is already well below the horizon, precisely because the atmosphere is less dense at higher altitudes. See https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_26.html Fig. 26-7
(Presumably this is also true at sunrise, so the day is longer than it "should" be from purely geometric considerations.)
Also, ships do not always sink below the horizon. The right atmospheric conditions can refract the light in a way that causes them to be visible at a much greater distance than the straight geometry would allow. But this explanation can be inverted to claim that it is the vanishing that is due to atmospheric effects and that the non-vanishing ship is the accurate reflection of the geometry. Falsifying that hypothesis is, again, not so easy.