A massive ball that appears to be made of metal has washed up on a beach in Japan with the area closed off as it was investigated, it is reported.
A local woman found the mysterious object at Enshu beach, in the city of Hamamatsu, and contacted police on Tuesday morning.
The ball is around 1.5 metres by diameter, appears rusty, suggesting it is made of iron, and has handle-like pieces of metal which would allow it to be hooked to something.
Inside a 200 metre enclosed area, explosive experts have been filmed wearing protective uniforms as they examine the ball.
And local media reports have said that X-ray scans have shown it to be hollow.
It was determined that the object was not explosive and so the restricted access was lifted at 4pm although it is still not known what it is, reported FNN.
Images have been sent to the Japanese armed forces and coast guard for them to be examined.
At the same time there has been plenty of speculation on social media about what the sphere could be at a time where mysterious objects have also been spotted in the sky in the United States.
The UK is to conduct a security review after a series of objects were shot down by the US military, including a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced plans to assess the dangers posed by the balloons.
Mr Wallace said: "The UK and her allies will review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security.
"This development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse."
It comes after US fighter jets shot down an "unidentified object" over Lake Huron earlier this month - the fourth object to enter US or Canadian airspace in just over a week.
Senator Jack Bergman said he'd been told by the Department of Defence that the military had "decommissioned" another "object" over Lake Michigan-Huron.
Since, Joe Biden has said that there is no indication that three of the shot down objects were linked to China and were more likely to be privately owned.
“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” Mr Biden said.
