A spaceship attached to the most powerful rockets mankind has ever created is a pretty good way to get humanity into space, but are we sure we can’t travel somewhere even more exciting, like to a different dimension per chance, if we just use the rocket all by itself? That seemingly absurd question will make a whole lot more sense after you watch this breathtaking video of a burning rocket, one that makes it look like we have found the opening to a parallel world.

This genuinely stunning footage provided by NASA is from a test firing of an Orbital ATK QM-2 rocket booster, recorded with NASA’s High Dynamic Range Stereo X camera (a.k.a. HiDyRS-X). Most cameras used for recording this kind of super-fast event can only capture one exposure at a time, but this camera is specifically designed to record “high speed, high dynamic range footage in multiple exposures” at the same time “for use in analyzing rocket engine tests.” It accomplishes that by filming “multiple high speed video exposures at once” and then combining them into a single “high dynamic range video.”

That all makes sense, but yet it’s hard to wrap your head around the beautiful images captured here.

Nothing about this seems real; it resembles something out of a big budget science-fiction movie. This looks like the purple cloud Peter Quill and the rest of the Guardians found themselves in at the end of the movie, or like a storm conjured up by some foreign god.

So though I’m fairly certain we can’t use this rocket to travel among the realms of the universe as though it is earth’s very own Bifröst, I’m not totally ruling it out either.

How would you describe what this looks like? Give us your best description in the comments below.

Image: NASA