A week after people across Russia reported witnessing a mysterious huge fireball flash across the night sky, there has still been no explanation, UK MailOnline reported.
For more than 10 seconds last Friday, an enormous aerial explosion eclipsed the skies over Russia's sparsely populated Urals region, sparking a web of speculation that has remained unanswered by multiple Russian authorities.
"For a few moments night turned into dazzling day, then everything went dark again," a witness told The Siberian Times.
The strange light was not accompanied by any sound, according to Yekaterinburg eyewitnesses. Instead, the sunburst-like eruption lit the dark evening into a dazzling orange light, which then transformed into a pulsating yellow and white.
Having captured the soundless flash through dash cams and smartphones over the town of Rezh, in Sverdlovsk region, about 930 miles east of Moscow, several local witnesses posted YouTube videos.
One driver, who shot the footage, issued an online plea for others to help him explain what caused the event.
"On Friday (November 14, at 5.40pm - though the camera records it an hour later) I observed a flash in the sky, on the road on the way to Rezh," he posted. "I found nothing about it on the news. Did anyone else see it? What was it?"
However, Russian media inquiries to emergency services, academic astronomers and the military have so far yielded a host of theories but no hard answers as to the cause of the mystery blast, The Christian Science Monitor reported.
When questioned about the rare phenomenon, Russian military sources denied having any involvement with the blast even though city officials believe ammunition disposal would be the likeliest explanation for the long, slow orange-tinged fireball, according to the E1.Ru news portal in Yekaterinburg.
Similarly, space officials insisted they had nothing to do with the explosion despite the fact that the area lies on a launch pathway from Plesetsk cosmodrome, where rockets have blown up on takeoff over the region in the past. But while their last launch was in October, the next one was scheduled in December, a leading unofficial Russian space news website stated.
"Theories for the explosion included a missile or an object from space," The Siberian Times reported. "Yet it did not have the same shape or pattern as the Chelyabinsk meteorite which exploded over the Urals in February 2103."
"Looks like a falling bolide," or meteorite, which evaded detection by the usual array of watchers before hitting our atmosphere, astronomer Viktor Grokhovsky told 66.Ru. But super-hot meteorites plowing through the atmosphere typically explode with a blinding white flash, experts argued.
"Inevitably, web versions claimed it could have been caused by a UFO," according to The Siberian Times.
Meanwhile, the regional office of the Emergencies Ministry refused to comment on the dramatic eruption. Additionally, neither meteorologists nor scientists have been able to explain the strange phenomenon.
