
Scientists discover mysterious sphere in Colombia, sparking UFO speculation
The sphere, according to social media page @Truthpolex, was spotted March 2 flying over the town of Buga, Colombia, before it landed. Jose Luis Velazquez, one of the researchers studying the three-layered sphere, noted that it shows "no welds or joints," characteristics normally indicative of human manufacture, which further bolstered his belief in its extraterrestrial origin.
Julia Mossbridge, the executive director of the Institute for Love and Time (TILT), and a member of the University of San Diego Department of Physics and Biophysics, told Fox News Digital she remains skeptical of its extraterrestrial origins.
"It looks to me like a really cool art project," she said, urging caution in drawing immediate conclusions.
Mossbridge framed the mysterious object as part of a "bigger picture" in which humanity must confront its own limitations.
"We are entering a time when we don't have the control that we thought we had," she said, noting that prior "grandiose" beliefs in total mastery blind us when "something shows up that doesn't fit our model of the world.
"If an artist is doing this, why is that? Well, I think it's partly the same reason. It's because we're learning that we don't understand what's in our skies, what's in our waters. And there's something going on that's essentially bigger than us," she said.
She says sightings of unexplained objects have been around for decades.
"Frankly, we've been looking at UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) for decades, and the federal government has admitted that there are things that we don't understand, but we are investigating them," she said.
Mossbridge said the coalition of individuals working to find answers, such as the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, the UAP Disclosure Fund and the Galileo Project, are made of people of "all political persuasions."
"They are all trying to get rigorous information themselves, not necessarily waiting on the federal government, about what's going on in our skies, what's going on in our waters and actually trying to get international cooperation around these things," she said. "Because, for instance, the sphere in Colombia is in a different country. So, what are the rules about how we deal with something that's interesting that's found there?"
Mossbridge urged thorough vetting before declaring anomalies in mysterious discoveries.
"Before you decide something's anomalous or a UFO, bring the object to a group like the Galileo Project," she said.
She said experts can determine if the material is "clearly non-human-made."
Despite her misgivings about the discovery in Buga, she said it doesn't "discount all the other objects that are of extraterrestrial origin."
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5 hours ago
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CNN
19 hours ago
- CNN
Meteorite that tore through southeastern US skies this summer determined to be older than Earth itself, researchers say
A meteorite that tore through the sky in June shaking the Southeast with a sonic boom is now believed to be 4.56 billion years old, according to researchers who studied it following its crash landing. Fragments of the extraterrestrial rock were turned over to scientists after they fell to Earth this summer to determine their classification and origin. The University of Georgia received 23 of the 50 grams of the McDonough Meteorite, named after the Georgia city where it ripped through the roof and ceiling of a home, according to the university. 'This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough,' Scott Harris, a researcher in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences' department of geology, said in the news release. Harris determined the meteorite to be a Low Metal (L) ordinary Chondrite – a type of stony meteorite – and thus 20 million years older than Earth by 'using optical and electron microscopy,' the university said. 'It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago,' Harris said in the release. 'But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth's orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time.' UGA is also working with partners at Arizona State University to submit the meteorite's name and findings to the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society, Harris said. Harris also plans to publish a scientific paper about the rock to further understand the potential threats meteorites pose. 'One day there will be an opportunity, and we never know when it's going to be, for something large to hit and create a catastrophic situation. If we can guard against that, we want to,' he said. The American Meteor Society received numerous reports of a fireball over the region on June 26, CNN previously reported. The reports came during the Bootids meteor shower, a lower-level celestial event that was ongoing during the last week of June. A Henry County, Georgia, resident had reported at the time that a rock – which would later be identified as the McDonough Meteorite – fell through their ceiling around the same time the June fireball occurred, according to the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. The object had broken through the roof and ceiling before cracking the flooring inside the home. 'I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things. One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment,' Harris said in the news release. 'There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments.' The resident told Harris he's still finding specks of space dust around his living room from the collision, according to the university. The rock is the 27th meteorite in history recovered in Georgia and the sixth witnessed fall. Seeing a daytime fireball is a rare occurrence: Fireballs are easier to view at night, but must be much brighter to be visible during the day, the American Meteor Society says. It's also 'quite rare' for sonic booms to be heard on the ground when a fireball occurs, according to the organization. A fireball is an unusually bright meteor that reaches a magnitude over -4, which is brighter than Venus, according to the American Meteor Society. June's fireball reached a magnitude of around -14, the society told CNN, which would have made it brighter than the full moon. It didn't take the McDonough space rock pummeling through roofs for others to spot it. In Lexington County, South Carolina, dashcam video showed a big flash of light falling through the sky on June 26. Brenda Eckard, 64, from Gilbert, South Carolina, previously told CNN she was driving home that June day when she saw a 'big flash in the sky come down and disappear.' She first thought it was a meteor that 'almost looked like a firework,' Eckard said. Eckard then called her husband to check if their house was still standing. The McDonough Meteorite is being stored at UGA for continued tests, according to UGA Today. Other pieces of it that fell on June 26 will be publicly displayed at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia. CNN's Devon Sayers, Brandon Miller and Zenebou Sylla contributed to this report.