Baltic Sea UFO – Round 3

There has been yet another update to the story about the “UFO” at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Some experts have studied samples taken from the site and come to some conclusions.

Associate professor of geology at Stockholm University Volker Bruchert examined some of the samples taken from the site of the UFO on the sea floor. He reports, “… most of the samples they have brought up from the sea bottom are granites and gneisses and sandstones.” He further explained that these are the types of objects one would expect to find in a glacial basin, which is what the Baltic Sea actually is, that is, a region carved out by a glacier during the Ice Age.

Professor Bruchert also received a single loose piece of basaltic rock from the divers, which is a type of hardened lava. “Because the whole northern Baltic region is so heavily influenced by glacial thawing processes, both the feature and the rock samples are likely to have formed in connection with glacial and postglacial processes. Possibly these rocks were transported there by glaciers.”

The Pictures

Another problem with the UFO theory is the pictures we have of the object. The pictures seen in news articles around the world were actually drawn by a graphic artist – they are not actual  photos of the anomaly.  The only actual picture of the object was taken by a sonar scan last summer. On the sonar, the image does look like a space ship, in fact, very like the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame.

According to seabed sonar-scanning expert Dan Fornari, who is a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, “The sonar image has numerous artifacts in it that make it difficult to interpret, and I would not place too much confidence in any interpretation until a better processing is done and the details of the type of sonar and particulars are provided. He added, “I’m saying the data are lacking in resolution, detail, and quantification.”

So it seems that scientists agree that what the divers found was just a glacial deposit on a low-resolution sonar scan.

Ocean-X Team

This must be very disappointing for the Swedish treasure hunters and divers known as “Ocean-X”. But let’s not put them down. To begin with, treasure hunters are going to face anything they find with a certain romantic notion and perhaps nostalgia. They’re all about excitement and discovery. They have to be or they wouldn’t be diving in very hostile environments just for the sake of finding some treasure.

I don’t believe they set out to fool the world for one minute. I’m sure they still hope and believe to prove the scientists wrong. In fact, they are making a documentary about the seafloor anomaly. Peter Lindberg, part of Ocean-X, has made tantalizing statements hinting that more will be revealed in the documentary.  He said, “We will reveal some quite interesting things in the documentary.”  Now that could just be salesmanship, or maybe they’ve got more to reveal.

The dive team have not revealed exactly where the anomaly sits on the seafloor, so no one has been able to get there and study it themselves. It will be interesting to see what else Ocean-X has to show us, if anything, about the object. But for now, we’ll have to accept it’s a natural formation.

Do Eyes Deceive?

But it is funny how it looks like the Millennium Falcon, isn’t it? Nature can do that. How many times have you seen “faces” in tree bark? Have you ever seen a rock formation that looks like a chair? How about this one, from Mercury, I believe. Clearly it’s proof that Walt Disney beat us to Mercury! 😉

Let us know what you think. Have you ever seen any strange natural formations?

Til the next time!

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