The Baltic Sea anomaly: USO or natural formation?
In 2011, treasure hunters found a disc-shaped object on the Baltic seabed. Is it a crashed spacecraft or just a rock? Bradley Walsh investigates.
Image: Sonar image of the 'Baltic Sea anomaly' | Fair use / Background: Shutterstock.com
In June 2011, Swedish treasure hunters were traversing the Baltic Sea when sonar readings directed them to something stranger than treasure. The team from the deep-sea exploration company Ocean X Team captured a sonar image of a mysterious, fascinating object lying on the seabed.
‘There’s this great big thing, like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, underneath the sea, sitting on a couple of rocks,’ Bradley Walsh enthuses. The host of Sky HISTORY’s Out of This World further observes that this Baltic Sea anomaly ‘looks like it’s been encrusted in barnacles’.
So, what actually is the Baltic Sea anomaly? That’s the big mystery. Some have written it off as simply a weirdly shaped rock. Others have insisted that it looks too artificial for that particular explanation to pass muster. Could it instead be a long-lost city, anti-submarine device or gun turret, or even, dare we say it, a crashed alien spacecraft? We at Sky HISTORY run through the most popular theories…
What is the Baltic Sea anomaly?
After Ocean X Team first discovered the object, the company sent divers down to take a much closer look in 2012. This was no easy task, given the murky visibility where the structure lies about 300 feet below the sea surface. Even the original sonar image has been criticised for its indistinct depiction of the anomaly.
For these reasons and others, there’s only so much we can really say with confidence about the anomaly. It is known to be about 60 metres (200 feet) in diameter and only a few metres thick. This makes it something of a disc, though its predominantly circular appearance is slightly offset by several sharp, angular edges – hence the Millennium Falcon comparisons.
Ocean X Team have not publicly released GPS coordinates of the Baltic Sea anomaly’s exact location. It is reportedly in the Gulf of Bothnia, a stretch of the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden. This has given rise to speculation that the anomaly was originally an anti-submarine device put there by Nazi forces during World War II. Other theories are rather more, ahem, adventurous…
Could the Baltic Sea anomaly really be extraterrestrial?
Bradley has pointed out the suspicious ‘tracks across the ocean floor’ leading up to where the anomaly now rests. Such observations have only strengthened the theory that the anomaly is a crashed spacecraft. Could those tracks show where the craft skidded as it ground to a halt?
That’s not the only sign that the object is potentially of extraterrestrial origin. According to Ocean X Team diver Stefan Hogeborn, the crew’s electrical devices have kept inexplicably failing when coming within 200 metres of the anomaly. Could this be electromagnetic interference? Could it be surrounded by some kind of invisible shield foiling the team’s research attempts?
So far, so speculative. However, the possibility of a large electromagnetic field at the site does bring to mind the ‘Bubble’ phenomenon detected at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. At the same time, though the Baltic Sea anomaly is often described as a USO (unidentified submersible object), USOs by definition don’t have to be extraterrestrial. It could even be a sunken city, like the legendary Atlantis.
What do scientists say about the Baltic Sea anomaly?
Sceptics have noted that reliable, detailed imagery of the anomaly is scant. One criticism is that even the most complete image is a mere ‘side-scan’, far from the most exhaustive type of sonar reading. From what geological experts can see, many insist that it largely points to a natural feature rather than anything particularly otherworldly.
One popular view among geologists is that the anomaly is a glacial deposit. The Baltic basin was carved out by ice during the last Ice Age, and as glaciers advanced and retreated, they carried rocks across the region and left them behind as the ice melted.
That fits the samples the Ocean X Team recovered from near the site in 2012. Volker Brüchert, an associate professor of geology at Stockholm University, examined them and found that most were granites, gneisses and sandstones, exactly what you would expect in a glacial basin. One black stone had looked as if it might be volcanic, but he still believed glaciers had probably carried the rocks there. The anomaly itself was left largely untouched, which has led some to argue that more research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.
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