One early morning at the end of last month, a giant ball of light flew over Alaska, the color of which was blue and white, and it shone with the aurora in the sky, and witnesses saw and photographed this rare spectacular scene. So, what exactly is this giant ball of light?
According to witnesses, the ball of light appeared to be very large, larger than the full moon. There are only a few possibilities for what this ball of light is: comets, fire meteors, man-made phenomena (including searchlights, balloons, spacecraft wreckage), and the popular alien spacecraft.
First, comets can be excluded. Comets, commonly known as broomstick stars, drag their long tails, but some comets appear spherical because they are observed from the direction of the tail of the comet, for example, Comet Holmes:
The comet exploded in brightness in 2007 , and its coma expanded rapidly beyond the diameter of the Sun. Although the comet was visible to the naked eye at the time, the maximum brightness was only 2.8 magnitudes, not as bright as the ball of light found this time, and the part that the naked eye could see was actually like a star.
Currently, there are no large comets close to the Sun, so we can't see spectacular comets with the naked eye on Earth. And the comet doesn't look like it's moving around the sky at such a fast speed, and the naked eye can't actually see the comet moving.
On the other hand, when the fire meteor falls, it will also drag a long tail, and it may explode in the air, emitting a yellow-white light. The color of the ball of light seen this time does not match, and the ball of light does not look likely to fall from the sky, so the ball of light is unlikely to be a meteorite that is falling.
An eyewitness provided key information when he saw what appeared to be spinning inside the ball of light. Based on the phenomena described by witnesses, combined with a series of photos of the ball of light, astronomers speculated that the giant blue ball of light may have been produced by a Chinese rocket.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, pointed out that at the same time on the day of the incident, China's Long March 6 carrier rocket was launched, and its flight path was consistent with the light ball seen.
The "Changliu Reform" rocket is a new generation of solid-liquid bundled rockets on the mainland, with four boosters using solid fuel, and the first and second stages using liquid oxygen-kerosene propellant. With a total length of 50 meters and a take-off weight of 530 tons, it can send a 4-ton payload into sun-synchronous orbit.
On the day of the appearance of the light ball in alaska, it was the first flight of the Changliu reform, and the rocket successfully sent two artificial satellites into sun-synchronous orbit with an orbital altitude of 588×604 kilometers and an orbital inclination of 97.8 degrees. After completing the launch mission, the second stage wreckage remained in space with an orbit of 558 ×601 km.
McDowell said the rocket could have drained the remaining fuel in space at the time. Because the rockets on the mainland will be passivated after entering space, the remaining fuel and high-pressure gas will be discharged, and the battery will be short-circuited, which can ensure that the rocket debris will not explode itself and effectively reduce the space debris generated by the final stage rocket.
When rocket fuel is emitted into space, they quickly freeze and spread out, forming huge clouds of gas that can range up to hundreds of kilometers. Under the illumination of the sun's rays, a huge glowing sphere will be produced, so that people on the earth can also see through the naked eye. As the rocket discharged its fuel, it rolled on its own, which is why witnesses saw something spinning in the ball of light.
In fact, this is not the first time this has occurred. In 2017, an even larger ball of light appeared over Siberia. After astronomers analyzed, this ball of light is likely to originate from a smoke plume produced by a Russian rocket, which produced this incredible scene under the sunlight.
Finally, the claim about alien spacecraft is untenable. While it is true that some UFOs cannot yet be explained exactly, there is no reliable evidence that they are alien spacecraft. The universe is so big that it is not excluded that other star systems will also give birth to civilizations, and even advanced civilizations with a level of science and technology far above that of human beings. But humans have been searching for decades, and the universe seems to be quiet, and no trace of extraterrestrial civilization activity has been found for the time being.