A couple of weeks ago, inhabitants in the city of Foshan in China's Guangdong territory were frightened when a floating city suddenly appeared in the clouds above them. It seemed to contain buildings and skyscrapers. However, the phenomenon lasted only a few minutes. Obviously, the people were freaked out. And it happens so that, a few days later, something similar was reported in the province of Jiangxi.
This news has gone viral and the internet is at all time crazy with theories. There are talks of parallel universes, aliens, and the most widely talked about is some weird NASA conspiracy. Anyhow i believe that reality is more of physics and less conspiracy.
To begin with, it seems that thousands of people saw the phenomenon but there is only one footage of the video being circulated. So we can't ignore the possibility of the video being a digitally altered one. Whatever the case may be, lets just assume the footage is real.
The most logical explanation would be called Fata Morgana. Fata Morgana is a type of mirage that projects a distorted image of a real object. Here it looks like the city's own image was reflected into the clouds.
Fata Morgana is quite rare of a phenomenon as it would require a particular set of weather conditions, for it to occur. In usual cases, it is known that cooler air happens sits on top of warmer air. But in the case of Fata Morgana, the opposite needs to happen thereby making it an extremely rare phenomenon.
Let's get more specific as to why the mirage appears the way it does. The air layers are at different temperatures and they also happen to be different in their densities. This means they can bend or refract rays of light at different angles. In other words, light being reflected of an object will be bent before reaching our eyes. When light hits your eyes, your brain assumes it arrived there in a straight path between you and the object reflecting the light. So if light is bent on its way toward you, your brain will think the object is where it would be if the light’s path was straight. Make sense?
It wouldn't be the first time Fata Morgana has caused some confusion.But mirages usually show castles, mountains or boats and not entire cities. So yes, seeing an entire city in the sky would be good enough of a reason for people to freak out.
Here is the footage that went viral.
