Authorities in a Japanese coastal town have admitted that they have no idea what a large iron ball washed up on the beach is, other than the fact that it will not explode.
According to local media, the 1.5-metre-diameter sphere washed up on Enshu beach in the Japanese city of Hamamatsu on the country’s Pacific coast.
Experts used X-ray technology to examine the interior of the object and determined that it was hollow, putting to rest fears that it was a stray mine.
There is no evidence that it conducted espionage for neighbouring North Korea or China.
The presence of two raised handles on the sphere’s surface, indicating that it can be hooked up to something else, led to a more mundane explanation: it is a mooring buoy that had simply worked loose and floated away.
While out for a walk earlier this week, a local woman noticed an orange-brown ball resting on the sand just metres from the shore. After receiving the report, police allegedly began inspecting the ball, which appears to have darker patches of rust.
Despite the fact that officers cordoned off the area and called in explosives experts dressed in protective clothing to investigate further, authorities still don’t know what the sphere is or where it came from, according to reports.
Photographs have been sent to Japanese self-defense forces and the coast guard for further investigation.
One local who frequently runs on the beach commented that he didn’t understand why the ball had suddenly become the centre of attention. When asked how long it had been there, he said “a month,” according to NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting company. “I pushed on it, but it refused to move.”
Experts tried to figure out what was going on, but police eventually surrounded the ball with a 200-meter cordon.
Some thought it resembled something from the Dragon Ball manga, while others thought it was a crashed UFO.
After seeing TV footage of the object, social media users speculated about it, especially given that Japan recently “strongly suspected” that multiple Chinese spy balloons had been spotted over its territory in recent years.
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