I am not talking at altitude of course. The reason for that is obvious. If you look out of the window of a commecial jet when you are taking off and landing, you cannot see any people on the ground (at least I can’t). I just flew back from San Francisco to Boston yesterday and tried my hardest to spot a person on the ground any time we were taking off and landing. I couldn’t even though cars even many much smaller objects were obvious. We flew quite low over a shopping center during one approach and there had to have been many people in the parking lot but I couldn’t see even one. I looked on sidewalks and in people’s yards as hard as I could but I didn’t see anyone even though there had to be some somewhere.
Have you ever watched “One Step Beyond”, “The Outer Limits”, or, “The Twilight Zone”?
Seriously, though. I have never noticed any problem seeing them going about their petty little lives while I fly high above them like a god! (note the small god, such a mythical Roman or Greek, not to be confused THE God!)
In answer to the OP: If you can’t see people then it’s because they are not there, too small to see, or you are just not noticing them. Unless you can hear a crunching sound coming from the East - in that case starting panicing.
People walking in the vicinity of most large airports are probably pretty scarce. Most of the land in all directions has been cleared for quite a way because of noise. Just the same, the next time you are landing at San Diego’s Lindberg Field, for example, take a good lookat downtown San Diego. You should see people.
You didn’t see the people because they were in the cars and in the mall. A mall parking lot during the daytime is generally not full of people. People generally are at home, at work or in their cars going to one or the other. A sidewalk is not an American’s typical habitat. And the places you were travelling between get a little chilly this time of year so I don’t think you’d see many folks enjoying a Thursday afternoon backyard barbecue.
Sorry if I sound a little harsh. I think people have gotten lazy and don’t get out enough.
I have another idea. The reason why you can see people in a parking lot that you’re standing in (other than the fact that they’re closer) is that everything in the scene is still, and the people are moving, and your brain has evolved to notice motion.
When looking down at a parking lot while flying over at 200 mph, the whole freakin’ parking lot is moving by quickly, so you don’t get the benefit of using your brain’s motion detector to find people.
This wasn’t a one-time experiment. I have been trying to spot a person from a plane window for years and I fly frequently. I have never succeeded. It may be just me but it probably isn’t. My eyesight is pretty good.
I know that it is nothing metaphysical. The people are there somewhere. I just can’t see them. I was thinking that the speed of the plane just made it difficult to locate and fix on an object the size of a human from the air. It may be due to the nature of eye movements. That is what I was curious about.
Try it for yourself. I would like to know if you can fix on a single person or a small group of people from a normal commercial jet at any point in the journey.
Well, what can I tell you? As I said in my first post, I see people on the jogging trail in the Wetlands down on the Peninsula all the time when landing at San Francisco International Airport. My office is near there, and I deliberately focus on that trail to see if I can see people. I can.
Of course, this may be b/c there’s usually low clouds in that area and we are closer to the ground than normal when coming in for a landing, but the fact remains I have tried it and I see people. YMMV.
Depending on the time of day, either early morning or later on at night, you can see a shadow on the ground take up more square footage than the human itself - keep in mind that at your altitude, the ground is basically a 2-dimensional map. Shadows rest on the ground while people stand upright. The cross-sectional area is what is your problem. While shadows may be too damn small to see at particular altitudes, try looking for them first. . .
Cars may have hundreds of square feet of visual cross-sectional area, while people themselves only have less than 5 or so (at the most).
Trust me, look at shadows, movement, and outlines.
Maybe if you were on this flight you could have seen some people. As an aside, I was at that very airport just a week earlier, man that’s a short runway, and yes it does end right at a major thoroughfare (Hollywood Way).
The “relative motion” answer may be onto something, but in a different way.
From way up above, people don’t look like people, they look like little specks. To notice a little speck–and remember you only get a kind of glimpse as you come in for a landing–it has to attract your eye in some manner. Usually, it is motion against the background that attracts the eye. But in this case, ordinary human motion, like walking, carries the speck across such a relatively minute span of the big surface you are seeing that the eye doesn’t pick up on it at all.
I’ve wondered the same thing, so if you’re dumb, that makes two!
I’ve seen people when landing at Midway in Chicago. You land on top of a white castle. Your only 75 feet away. You can look in the window long enough to make eye contact with someone. Next time I should wear a mask, that will freak them out.