the.com/heat shimmer
The sky's way of admitting it has no idea what it's doing.
means The wavy distortion you see above hot pavement or sand, caused by light bending as it passes through air layers of different temperatures and densities.
from Not a word with ancient roots but a plain descriptive phrase — 'heat' plus 'shimmer,' the latter from Old English 'scimerian,' to shine faintly or flicker, itself related to 'shine.' The phenomenon it names is pure physics: hot air near the ground is less dense, so light refracts unevenly as it passes through rising layers of different temperatures, bending and blurring the image behind it. Ancient sailors and desert travelers surely watched it for millennia before anyone bothered naming it — it's also the everyday cousin of the mirage, just without the illusion of water.
- actual cause
- light bending through air layers of different densities
- not water
- the puddle mirage is refracted sky, not liquid
- same family as
- mirages seen over deserts and highways alike
- speed factor
- hotter air moves faster, bending light more erratically