While scientists have an explanation for what appears to be a city in China's skyline, conspiracy theorists believe it is NASA's secret project which fakes the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The New York Daily News reports that what appears to be a city in the sky, seen on Oct. 7 in Jiangxi and Foshan, is the Fata Morgana, a mirage. The optical illusion is created by the bouncing and bending of light through different layers of air when temperatures are low.
Professor Kenneth Bowman of Texas A&M University explains, "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," quotes the Christian Science Monitor.
The mirage got its name from Morgan Le Fay, a sorceress from the medieval Arthurian legend who cast an illusion of multiple buildings and cliffs over the Strait of Messina in Italy. Her aim was to entice sailors to their death.
Jesse Ferrell, a meteorologist, adds that the mirage is likely a reflection of a small island, which when vertically stretched, appears like a skyscraper.
However, conspiracy theorists insist that NASA used a hologram to simulate the apocalypse or the invasion of aliens as part of the space agency's Blue Beam project. But Bowman dismisses the hologram theory as falling "into the category of wacko."
Conspiracy theorists, which count UFOlogists, believe in aliens arriving or spying on Earth aboard space craft that are often ordinary jets. But scientists point out that apparitions of a city or cliff is commonly seen in the U.S. during autumn.