That 'Glowing Ball' Over Siberia Wasn't Aliens But Still Something Creepy

Last week, several people in Siberia reported a vaguely apocalyptic ball of light in the sky, which is both unsettling and on-brand for this year. While eyewitnesses thought the glowing sphere was the end of times or maybe even a UFO, the actual cause of the event might be something even more bizarre.

According to The Siberian Times, stargazers in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Russia had little explanation for what they were witnessing. Out of nowhere, a glowing circle seemed to appear in the sky like something from Twin Peaks: The Return.

One onlooker, Vasily Zubkov, said he was caught off-guard by the ominous orb and chalked it up to an impending doom. After waking up to a fresh hell every day this year, being eaten alive by a giant light wouldn’t even seem that unusual.

“I went out to smoke a cigarette and thought it was the end of the world,” he posted on the social media site VK.

Another VK user, Anastasia Boldyreva, put it more bluntly: “Aliens arrived.”

Obviously, the giant light ball wasn’t aliens or the apocalypse, but it was still something weird as hell. On October 26, Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced on Facebook that it had launched a Topol-M ballistic missile as part of a test mission. This, combined with some especially bright Northern Lights on display, could have accounted for the strange glow. Honestly, intercontinental missiles are much creepier than the other explanations.

While there hasn’t been any definite confirmation on what the glowing bubble was, we know what it definitely wasn’t: aliens. Please stop saying it’s aliens, you guys — if you keep talking about them like this they won’t ever visit.

If you liked this article, check out this video of an expert look at xenomorph biology from Alien.