On video: a mysterious metal ball washed ashore in Japan (Reuters)
Japanese police closed the beach in Hamamatsu, a southern city about 250 kilometers from Tokyo, after a local resident reported a mysterious egg-like ball that appeared on the beach on a clear day.
The police began investigating the metal ball that came from an unknown source last Tuesday.
According to a police spokesman, the object found is a ball with a diameter of about 120 cm which is made of iron because it has a coating of rust. Officials restricted access to a radius of 200 meters around the object for most of the day, as demolition teams were seen examining the ball. Photo An X-ray later determined the object was hollow and there was no danger of an explosion, with restrictions lifted around 4 p.m., Fuji News Network reported.
What could it be?! (Photo: screenshot, Twitter/NHK)
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A mysterious ball washed up on the beach in Japan (Photo: screenshot, Twitter/NHK)
Vice News estimates that the object is merely a mooring buoy - as it has a protrusion that allows connection to some entity.
Although this is indeed the most logical solution, the strange discovery has sparked a host of theories on social networks.
Many were quick to link it with the Chinese spy balloon in the US and other unidentified objects found floating in the sky recently. The Japanese police announced that they had asked local officials responsible for beach management to collect the ball.
"Godzilla Eggs"
The mysterious ball has of course also sparked somewhat delusional conspiracy theories - mainly because it still remains a mystery.
Some have suggested that it is a dinosaur egg.
Some also associated the "egg" with the famous fictional monster in Japan, Godzilla.
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A number of conspiracy buffs claimed that the object looked like it came from the movie Sphere, a 1998 fantasy thriller based on Michael Crichton's bestseller of the same name.
"If science fiction has taught us anything, it's that if someone were to touch this thing, their hand would be transported to a parallel universe and all hell would break loose," noted Wall Street Journal writer Paul Vienna.
One Japanese public figure, a cheeky mascot named Chitan, went so far as to say, in effect, "C'est moi. - It's me." "An iron ball about 1.5 meters in size, found in Shizuoka," the mascot's operators wrote on Twitter, "It could be I am."
静岡で約1.5mの鉄球がしますたったったっ☆った、ちぃたん☆のうしたっっ☆ちぃたん☆ですっ☆# ですっっ☆
#
— ちぃたん☆／Chiitan (@chiitan7407) February 21, 2023
So what is it really?
After taking an X-ray, the police confirmed that it was not an explosive device.
It was just a big, spherical piece of scrap metal—a reminder that the oceans, like the skies, are full of mystery and trash.
"The ball will eventually grind," Hiroyuki Yagi, an official at the Shizuoka Prefecture River and Coastal Management Bureau, told The New York Times by phone Friday, adding that authorities had assigned a local company to hold it for now.
The militaristic interpretation reflected the finding reflected the geopolitical tensions in the region.
At the end of last week, a North Korean missile landed in the waters west of Japan, and at the beginning of this month, a Chinese spy balloon over the United States led to a diplomatic crisis and resulted in numerous sightings of flying objects.
Therefore, after the photos from the beach appeared online, many estimated that it was a spy buoy.
It was, of course, an ordinary buoy and not a spy object, experts said.
"It's just a normal buoy," an oceanographer from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said in an interview.
Dr. Sand said such buoys are widely available for purchase online and can be seen on Pinterest. Oceanographers use different types of buoys for many types of research and usually paint them in bright colors, with a name or phone number, often attaching a flashing light or flashlight to help track. the expensive equipment attached to them.
Buoys like the one found in Japan are usually made of steel and are often used to moor ships in harbors or at sea. They usually float on the surface, unlike other buoys that can withstand the pressures of deeper water. Dr Sand said the response to the buoy found in Japan seemed a little strange to him, in light of the widespread use of such devices in ocean research and maritime shipping.
"Maybe everyone is paranoid because of the Babylonians," he estimated.
Similar research buoys have washed ashore in Santa Barbara, California, and Miami in recent years, Dr. Sand said, and in those cases, phone numbers appearing on them quickly pointed authorities to researchers. But authorities in Japan have been unable to determine where the buoy came from or who owned it, because its exterior was too rusty and had no visible marks, said Mr. Yagi of the Bureau of Coastal Management.
The fact that the buoy was not covered in shells or seaweed suggests that it probably did not come from very far away, said Shigeru Fujida, a marine debris expert at Kagoshima University in southern Japan. said his best guess was that the buoy was designed to anchor a ship or other heavy object. It was probably not used for scientific purposes, as it was both unpainted and larger than the research buoys that normally wash ashore, Professor Fujida added. "These buoys are a bit Bigger than basketball," he said, "not as big as this."
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