In a previous article, Mxsmanic said:
Yes - I have a name writes:

I'm sure I've seen wheels on cars that appear to be moving backwards. Are my
eyes defective?

No, but your memory is imperfect. You've never seen that in real life, only
on TV and in films, or under stroboscopic lighting.

Wikipedia references some scientific papers that show three distinct cases
of people seeing it non-strobing (ie natural sunlight).

1. People see the effect on car wheels, mostly because hubcaps have
reflective surfaces that cause a strobing of the light in natural
sunlight, but also because of other things changing the light, like
shadows or the reflection off other objects.

2. People see the effect when their eyes are being vibrated. The article
addresses people seeing it when humming, but I suspect the same effect
could happen with the low frequency noise that permeates an airplane
cockpit.

3. There is some controversy about an effect that *some* people see when
they stare at a moving pattern of dots for periods of time greater than 30
seconds (some needing to stare as long as 10 minutes before they see it).
Some scientists are saying that it shows that our brain processes vision
in discrete frames. Others say it's a totally different effect.

I've never seen it in the air, and I'd never heard of it until I read the
wikipedia article, but it turns out that Maxwell and others are correct
and you're wrong. I guess I should have known.


--
Paul Tomblin http://blog.xcski.com/
"My band is called Imation CDR 74m 650 MB...have you seen our CDs?"