The Hamamatsu beach sphere
The account
A giant iron ball appeared out of nowhere on the sand, and social media talked about an alien probe and even a "Godzilla egg."
What investigators found
The sphere was hollow and contained no explosives; the most accepted explanation is a mooring buoy carried in by the sea.
The story
In February 2023, a metal sphere about one and a half meters in diameter appeared on Enshu beach, in Hamamatsu, Japan. No one knew where it had come from, and police cordoned off the area and called in the bomb squad, which examined the object with X-rays.
The scan showed the ball was hollow and posed no danger. While social media talked about a space probe and espionage, the most accepted explanation became a large mooring buoy that had broken loose at sea, and the object was removed from the beach a few days later. The case shows how an ordinary object out of context can become a mystery within hours.