City In The Clouds

The oasis in the desert was a legendary mirage, a cruel taunt for those who were stranded, dying of thirst. For some reason it seemed to feature strongly in all the literature I read as a child. I learned that it was mere illusion - but not only in the desert.
Widely reported visions of a city in the clouds have recently spread from China.

Fata Morgana describes an illusion (usually inverted) caused by the action of cold air layers meeting heat haze in the atmosphere, showing a scene which is often miles away - the name itself is from a tradition associated with the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, who is said to have conjured illusions of castles in the air, thus luring sailors to their deaths...

Morgan Le Fay  by Frederick Sandys

Allusions have already been made to the obvious mythos - Heaven or Valhalla depending on your personal views - or more recently, the cloud city in 'The Empire Strikes Back' , or 'Columbia' from the game Bioshock Infinite.
Not to be outdone, similar strangeness was allegedly seen in Hastings-On-Sea , here in the U.K.
Ahem
Adding to the weirdness , an alleged photograph from the Netherlands showing what may or may not be an inter-dimensional vehicle emerging from a portal - or trapped in one, it's difficult to tell, really.
The last image has been linked theoretically to some quantum badness unleashed by the Large Hadron Collider . Black Holes and a gateway to Hell itself probably...
Much ado has been made and the phrase 'parallel universe' has been bandied around. 

Another theory which was given as a reason for the vision of a cloud city is Project Blue Beam, in which NASA are allegedly projecting holograms into the sky by way of faking an alien invasion.
Why?- is the obvious question, yet there are no obvious answers.
All I can say is this - given that NASA are so cash-strapped, and constantly with the begging bowl for further space exploration, it seems odd that they can spend so much time and money on massive holographic projections.
On the other hand, this is exactly what's been done to replace the giant Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban.
So maybe...

Megastructures revisited

Last weeks flurry of excitement - the strange dips in light from a nearby star-led to a rash of  bizarre theorising involving the mooted Dyson sphere, an energy gathering construct of truly monstrous proportions (big enough to encircle a star for the purpose of absorbing all of its energy).
As per usual, the internet got carried away in a frenzy of excited conjecture (myself included), and totally failed to take a deep breath and calm down.
for this reason, the very fact that the Dyson sphere does not actually exist outside of the realms of theoretical conjecture was ignored.
Ahem.
That is not to say it is impossible.
Just highly improbable.

Whatever the cause of the irregular fluctuations, it warrants a closer look.
They are already pointing a telescope in that direction, thanks to SETI , and a further bout of targetting will happen in January.