Mysterious iron ball puzzled Japan: UFO or dragon egg

Japan is baffled by an iron ball washed ashore. On the Web, users express a variety of guesses: a spy ball, a UFO, or even a dragon egg.

A mysterious metal sphere with a diameter of about 1.5 meters has become the source of intense speculation on the Internet, writes The Guardian.

Police and residents of a coastal Japanese city have been baffled by a large iron ball tossed by sea waves onto a local beach, with authorities admitting they have no idea what it is – it’s clear that the mysterious object doesn’t seem to be about to explode. .

The 1.5-meter-diameter sphere has been at the center of feverish speculation since the object washed up on Enshu Beach in the Pacific coast city of Hamamatsu, according to local media reports.

Fears that it might have been a mine roaming the seas were allayed after experts used X-ray technology to examine the inside of the object and found it to be hollow inside.

There is also no indication that the mysterious ball could be somehow involved in espionage by neighboring North Korea or China.

The presence of two protruding handles on the surface of the sphere, indicating that it could be hooked to something else, suggested a more prosaic explanation: it was a mooring buoy that simply broke off and floated out to sea.

Police began examining the orange-brown ball with darker rust spots after a local woman spotted it lying on the sand just meters from the shore when she went for a walk earlier this week, Asahi TV reported.

Police cordoned off the area and called in explosives experts clad in body armor to investigate further, but reports say authorities still don’t know what the sphere is or where it came from.

A mysterious metal ball spotted on a beach in the city of Hamamatsu this week prompted local police to call in bomb squads. Careful examination showed that this is not a threat, but shed no light on what it really is.

Photos of the balloon were sent to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and Coast Guard for further study.

One local resident who runs regularly on the beach says he doesn’t understand why the ball is suddenly in the spotlight. “He was there for a month,” he told public broadcaster NHK. “I tried to push this thing, but it wouldn’t budge.”

At one point, the police blocked the 200-meter radius around the ball while experts unsuccessfully tried to solve the mystery.

There have been speculations that it resembled something from the popular Dragon Ball manga series (“Dragon’s Egg”), while others have speculated that it was a UFO that fell from the sky.

Television footage of the object sparked social media speculation, shortly after Japan said it “strongly suspects” that several Chinese spy balloons have been sighted over its territory in recent years.