"Glitch In The Matrix": Plane Appears To Pause In The Air, Old Video Resurfaces

Is it possible for an airplane to freeze mid-air? An old video suggesting just that is going viral on the internet. Will Manidis posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) in October depicting what appears to be a stationary plane hovering above the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge and San Francisco Bay.

While on a flight from New York City to the Bay Area, Mr Manidis informed PEOPLE that he "noticed the optical illusion just as the plane was landing" as he looked out of the window.

He told People that he "was recording videos of the beautiful views before noticing the weird illusion."

Mr Manidis shared the video on X, formerly Twitter with the caption, "Watched a plane pause in the air today and y'all still think physics is real."

In a subsequent post, Mr Manidis wrote, "Lots of 'physics understanders' in the qts pretending that they've never dropped a pound of bricks and a pound of feathers at the same time and disproved Newtonian physics at home," before joking, "didn't realize big physics had this many shills."

See the video here:

watched a plane pause in the air today and y'all still think physics is real pic.twitter.com/ZHS4yrmvAN

— Will Manidis (@WillManidis) October 13, 2023

The viral video has amassed over 30 million views on X. Commenting on the video, a user wrote, "There's a glitch in the matrix."

Another user wrote, 'Ssshhhhhh, it's sleeping."

The third user pointed out, "This is called Parallax effect. it occurs when objects closer to you seem to move faster than those farther away. The result is that objects moving slower than the others appear static. Physics is amazing."

"Ok. Whatever you say. It's not at all as if the plane you were in had a higher approach speed and was approaching a different runway at SFO thus creating a difference in relative speed and direction," the fourth user wrote. 

"What scarier is how close the two airliners are to each other," the fifth user wrote.