A while back, residents in Foshan in China’s Guangdong province were surprised by what seemed like a floating city in the sky. A number of conspiracy theorists believed it was checking for a top-secret NASA task developed to imitate alien intrusion or the 2nd coming. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, but… the video from Foshan’s regional news is quite freaky, even if the reasonable among us understand that a secret sky civilization is the things of sci-fi.
As it ends up, the clinical description is practically as cool as the dream, and a lot less foreboding than you might initially think.
Foshan’s sky city is a kind of mirage called a Fata Morgana, which is an outstanding, black-metal name that stems from the name of King Arthur’s wicked sorceress, Morgan le Fay. Fata Morganas are generally super-distorted reflections of actual things, in this case the skyline of Foshan itself.
The mirages are produced by light passing through layers of air that have various temperature levels and densities, so that it refracts at various angles, according to Wired. Fata Morganas just happen in thermal inversions, where the warmer air exists above the cooler air.
Fata Morganas are uncommon since they depend on all these various climate condition to be present at the very same time. They have actually been around permanently, puzzling sailors and freaking individuals out. In fact, we actually wrote about one years ago, and this also happened in China. They’re pretty cool, but apparently not all that rare.
Have you ever seen one?
