People in cities and towns near Siberia's Lake Baikal have reported seeing a mysterious bright object flying slowly through the sky, and posted videos and photos online to corroborate their accounts, Russian news reports said Wednesday.
The reports of “UFO” sightings poured in from scores of people in the Irkutsk region, near Lake Baikal, the local branch of the state-run Rossia-1 television network reported.
The object resembled a meteorite, but seemed much brighter and was moving too slowly, witnesses were quoted as saying.
Sergei Yazev, a senior research scientist from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics who watched the videos, said the “slow velocity is extremely uncharacteristic for a comet or a bolide,” the Dni.ru news portal reported.
“Even if we concede that it could have been a spent rocket stage, then the speed with which it falls would still be many times greater,” Yazev was quoted as saying.
