Residents in south-east Australia were recently shocked to see a mysterious fireball screeching across the sky at mindblowing speed. Soon after the sighting, social media was flooded with panic messages from residents in Victoria, and many people outlandishly claimed that the UFO that appeared in the skies could be an alien spaceship.
Australian Senator Witnessed the Incident
After analyzing clips shared on social media, space experts confirmed that the flying object spotted in the skies was not a meteor. According to the space scientists, meteor sightings usually last for just three seconds, but the mysterious object was present in the skies much longer.
Tasmanian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson too witnessed the incident, and he claimed that the sighting literally resembled the scenes portrayed in Hollywood alien films.
"I saw this driving home tonight. Pulled over to film it but it went behind hills. It was very slow-moving and looked like a massive meteor shower. Totally weird. I'm not watching Independence Day or War of the Worlds tonight!" wrote Whish-Wilson on his Twitter page, the Daily Mail reports.
However, the tweet made by Whish-Wilson remains deleted now. Some other eyewitnesses revealed that the sighting looked like an airplane crash. The eyewitnesses claimed to have seen a massive burning trail of embers in the skies, lasting almost 30 seconds.
Expert Explanation
As panic prevailed, experts made it clear that the space object that lit the skies in Australia could be the remnants of a rocket used to launch a Russian satellite into orbit.
Experts revealed that space junks used to take some time to disintegrate, and this could be the reason why this UFO streaked across the skies for more than 30 seconds.
"The fact it was slow-moving and at a shallow angle, and an amount of disintegration was occurring, gave it away it was not an alien spacecraft, a meteor, or comet. It's a late-stage Russian rocket that put up a satellite," said Perry Vlahos, vice president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria.
