By Tim Binnall
The appearance of a peculiar UFO over Tennessee caused a stir among residents and while the object seems to have a terrestrial explanation, its origin has proven to be something of a perplexing mystery. The strange sighting reportedly occurred on Wednesday evening when multiple people in the eastern part of the state spotted an illuminated circular anomaly hovering in the night sky. As so often happens with such enigmatic aerial events, a local television station soon received several calls from concerned or confounded viewers wondering what they had just seen.
Fortunately, one such witness happened to be professional photographer Nate Nelson, who managed to snap a photo of the puzzling UFO, which appears to be spherical in shape, somewhat metallic, and sporting a set of lights around its edges. Fears that the object was the first wave of an alien invasion were seemingly put to rest when a check of the air traffic-tracking website FlightAware indicated that it was merely a balloon dispatched by Google's parent company Alphabet as part of their project designed to improve internet access for rural areas.
However, when the local TV station set about confirming that identification, things took something of a weird turn as a representative from the company told them that the project "was actually wound down in early 2021 and has not flown any balloons since last year." A subsequent check with the FAA also yielded no answers as to what was flying over Tennessee on Wednesday night. So while it would appear that the object was most likely a balloon of some kind, who launched it and why remains a mystery.