Mysterious ‘space balls’ plunging to Vietnam are not UFO parts: military general

The mysterious ‘space balls’ were not made in Vietnam and did not belong to any of the country’s flying objects, Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of the General Staff the Vietnam People’s Army, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

“These devices were made by humans. Competent authorities are working to find out what they really are and will announce an official conclusion soon,” Lt. Col. Tuan said.

The military official also denied reports that Russian letters were written on one of the spheres.

The Military Command in Tuyen Quang, one of the provinces in which the objects were found, had worked with officers from the 2nd Military Region and the provincial police department and asserted that the orbs are not explosives or meteors.

They could be oxygen or hydrogen tanks, according to the military.

Two unidentified metal orbs were discovered in the provinces of Tuyen Quang and Yen Bai in northern Vietnam on January 2, following a loud noise from a supposed aerial explosion.

The first sphere, about 50kg in weight, was found by residents in Tuyen Quang and has two sealed ends, with a perimeter of approximately two meters and foreign characters on its surface.

Another similar object, around 5.8kg in weight and 30 centimeters in radius, was discovered in Yen Bai a few hours later.

In the afternoon of the same day, a metal piece weighing about 0.2kg was reported to fall onto a house of a resident in Yen Bai.

Nobody in the house was injured by the fragment.

All of the three objects have been kept by competent agencies to assist in the ongoing identification process.

The unknown piece of metal found in Yen Bai on January 2, 2016. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Similar spheres have been found in other parts of the world.

In November 2011, a metal orb weighing 5.9kg was spotted falling in a remote area in Namibia, leaving an impression on the ground that was 30 centimeters deep and four meters in diameter.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was asked by the Namibian authorities to carry out an investigation and then concluded that the object was a hydrazine tank from an unmanned rocket, which was used in launching satellites.

Three unknown metal spheres, weighing 40kg each and having a diameter of 76 centimeters, were also discovered in China in May 2014.

Chinese scientists probed them and identified the objects as parts of a rocket, according to Xinhua.