A supposed floating city in the clouds above China reportedly stunned thousands of residents in Jiangxi and Foshan recently, causing them to snatch their cameras and document a phenomenon that weather experts believe is merely a Fata Morgana optical illusion.
Pictures from the Chinese residents showed what appeared to be eerie skyscrapers towering over one another in the
darkening clouds, according to the Daily Mail. The ghostly sighting in Foshan was followed a few days later by the sighting in Jiangxi, each of which lasted for only a few minutes, mesmerizing the onlookers.
But weather experts quickly shut down conspiracy theorists’ claims that the floating cities were a part of the supposed NASA program called Project Blue Beam, which predicts that holograms simulating an alien invasion or Christ’s second coming will
appear in the clouds, the U.K. Express reported.
Instead, weather experts have deemed this reported apparition to be an atmospheric event known as
Fata Morgana, according to the Christian Science Monitor. This optical illusion takes place when rapidly cooling temperatures or temperature inversions cause light rays to bounce in unusual ways.
“But when you get this unusual temperature structure in the atmosphere you can get light rays where light scatters off the surface and goes up into the atmosphere and is refracted back down to the surface again,” said Prof. Kenneth Bowman from Texas A&M University’s department of geosciences, according to the CS Monitor. “It’s not exactly a reflection because it’s not a mirror but it’s like looking through a lens and you’re seeing the surface at a long distance away but it looks like it’s floating up in the atmosphere.”
The Fata Morgana phenomenon was named after Morgan Le Fay, a sorceress from the medieval Arthurian legends, who allegedly cast an illusion over the Strait of Messina in Italy with the purpose of luring unsuspecting sailors to their deaths, according to the CS Monitor. The period between the fall and winter seasons is especially ripe for Fata Morgana optical illusions in both China and the United States.
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