Well, here’s something you don’t find floating in the water every day: a giant piece of metal from an offshore wind turbine. The Swedish coast guard recently identified the so-called UFO—and it’s the second rogue object spotted within a month.
Last week, the Swedish Coast Guard received a tip about a mysterious UFO, in this case an “unidentified floating object,” bobbing up and down near the country’s border with Norway. The Marine Corps and the Smögen Sea Rescue Company expressed their concerns about the object’s size, which they deemed large enough to obstruct shipping operations.
Human origins
The coast guard then dispatched a patrol vessel, KBV 310, to investigate the rogue object, which turned out to be a broken wind turbine blade—a metal chunk with distinctly human origins, as far as we’re aware.
“The size of the object was unclear but large enough to pose a hazard to seafaring,” the coast guard reported in a Facebook post. After dragging the object out of the water, the crew determined that the UFO’s size measured about 50 feet (15 meters) by 16 feet (5 meters). Investigators have yet to determine how or when the wind turbine may have ended up in the ocean.
Surprisingly, this is the second time that the Coast Guard had to respond to a sighting of this nature in August. The first UFO also turned out to be something human-made: a hot water heater.
A lurking problem
Sweden—like most Scandinavian countries—prides itself on its strong commitment to renewable energy. According to the Swedish government, more than half of the country’s energy comes from sustainable sources, underscoring its commitment to moving away from fossil fuels. However, its relationship with wind power has been rather clunky of late, with the government canceling an ambitious plan to build 13 wind farms amid geopolitical tensions with Russia.
So far, nothing suggests that the recently discovered UFO turbine has anything to do with this decision. The most likely scenario is that the stray part came from an offshore wind farm construction project commissioned by the government back in 2013.
For some Swedish citizens, though, the eerie discovery will undoubtedly serve as a reminder of the country’s recent re-evaluation of its relationship with wind energy—and, to some extent, renewable energy.
Meanwhile, the Swedish coast guard is among the most trusted government agencies in Sweden, according to surveys. Its primary job isn’t to scan the water for alien objects, but its positive reputation may help explain why Swedes trust the agency to handle the occasional UFO sighting.