Floating City China

Photo credit: Mail Online

Thousands of people in the Chinese cities of Jiangxi and Foshan claim to have seen a ‘floating city’ in the sky. Many residents believed they had witnessed an inter-dimensional portal or a parallel universe, but weather experts say the phenomenon is known as an optical illusion called “Fata Morgana”. Apparently, this illusion is a type of mirage that distorts distant objects, can be can be seen on land or sea, and caused when the sun heats up the atmosphere above the land or oceans, which creates a gradient of temperatures. Continue reading for another video and more information.

“The air close to the surface is relatively cool and above that, there are layers of warmer air. When light hits a boundary between two layers that are different temperatures – and as a result different densities – it bends and travels at a different angle. Our brain assumes that light travels in a straight paths, so when it bends, we think the object is where it would be if the light’s path runs straight. In this case, light reflected from the skyscrapers is bent downward as it passes through the colder, denser air. Because the brain puts the object where it would be if the light traveled a straight path, the distant skyscrapers appear higher than they actually are,” reports Mail Online.

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