Mysterious UFO sighting over Beijing sparks SpaceX speculation

Residents of Beijing and other parts of China were left intrigued on Sunday evening as they reported sightings of a . The unusual event quickly became a hot topic on Chinese social media platforms, particularly Weibo, where it became the fifth most searched topic by noon on Monday, amassing over 900,000 threads.

Posts began flooding social media after witnesses observed and photographed an unidentified flying object in the sky around 6 pm on Sunday. Descriptions varied, with one Beijing resident characterizing it as a "moving cloud like object." At the same time, another provided a more detailed account, stating, "The weather in Beijing was very clear, with no clouds, and then I saw a glowing object looming, but the light was not flashing." This person went on to describe the luminous object as having "three light sources and [being] shaped like an isosceles triangle," eventually dissipating "like a mist and disappear without a trace." Reports of the UFO extended beyond Beijing, with sightings documented in Tianjin and the central province of Shanxi and Shandong in the east.

Witnesses commonly described the object as a "misty ball of light" swiftly traversing from west to east without emitting any sound. Notably, many observers ruled out the possibility of it being an aircraft due to the absence of flashing lights. Wang Zhuoxiao, a researcher at the Centre for Astronomy Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, shed light on a plausible explanation.

He suggested that the mysterious object could have been the aftermath of a rocket launch, specifically the one used to deploy the latest Starlink satellites as part of Elon Musk's SpaceX initiative. Wang explained that the trajectory of the Falcon 9 rocket, which carried 22 into low Earth orbit from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, brought it over northern China at the halfway point of its 53 degree inclination to the south.

Wang emphasized that after the satellite deployment, the rocket likely dumped excess fuel, a process that could scatter light and form a cloud around the rocket. The irregular shapes observed in the "rocket cloud" could be attributed to the rocket's tumbling motion to dispel additional fuel.

An anonymous astronomer from the supported this theory, suggesting that similar sightings in northern China on September 13 were linked to a rocket cloud formed after a previous spacecraft launch. As the speculation surrounding the mysterious object continues, the scientific community encourages further analysis to determine the precise cause of this celestial phenomenon, .

In a world captivated by the unknown, events like these spark the imagination and fuel conversations on social media, reminding us of the mysteries that still linger beyond our daily lives..