Giant plasma bubble seen over Beijing

Astronomers in Beijing can’t quite put their finger on the composition or origin of a giant, expanding bubble that appeared Saturday in thee night sky at around 9 p.m. China time. The glowing cloud was seen in several Chinese cities and officials believe it was the same thing. But what that “thing” is, no one quite knows.

Eastday, a news portal site in Shanghai, has some local theories as to the source of the white ball:

Yu Jun, a former editor of a scientific magazine and amateur astronomer who witnessed the object, published an analysis saying the expanding bubble likely was a phenomenon caused by the “fuel of a thruster that diffused in outer space.”

Yu compared the bubble to an incident in Hawaii on June 22, when a cloud-like object rose from the horizon and expanded into a huge bubble and disappeared. Astronomers linked the bubble to the launch of an intercontinental missile from California four minutes before the object appeared.

The report quoted Phil Plait, an American astronomer, who thought that unused fuel from the missile was left in outer space and coalesced into an expanding spherical shell, which people observed as a glowing ball as it reflected sunlight. (TheBlaze)