The mystery behind the glowing ball over the skies of Siberia has finally been solved, and the answer might not be what most expect.

The glowing circle, spotted last week, was not the outline of an alien spacecraft nor a sign of the end of times. The reason behind the phenomenon is something that has been all too real over the past several months.

The Glowing Ball Over Siberia Explained

The glowing ball in the Siberian skies was clearly not a natural phenomenon. Its tantalizing glow and weird shape caught the attention of onlookers, spawning various theories on what they were looking at, The Siberian Times reported.

Aliens, of course, was one of the top suggestions for the anomaly. There were also concerns that the glowing circle was the manifestation of a gap in the space-time continuum. Other terms that were thrown around included "portal to another dimension," "the most powerful searchlight," and "the end of the world."

The real reason behind the glowing ball, however, is not something from science fiction. In a Facebook post, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation revealed that it launched a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile that night in a testing exercise.

The missile, which was launched from northwestern Russia in the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, was headed to western Russia's Kamchatka, namely the Kura testing range. The glowing ball that appeared in the skies of Siberia was nothing more than a by-product of the testing, with the fumes of the Topol missile combining with the sun's rays to create the dazzling sight.

"These were indeed missile tests," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, laying to rest any remaining doubt on the origin of the glowing circles.

Making the glowing ball more prominent was that the northern lights were expected to be very bright that night. That also meant that there were many people looking up, which is why the previously unexplained phenomenon was spotted by so many people.

Aliens vs Missiles

So there you have it. The glowing ball over Siberia was caused not by aliens but by missile testing.

However, with the escalating tension within the global political arena, intercontinental missiles might be a bit scarier for some than contact with extraterrestrial species. Russia has been advancing its missile capabilities, while other countries such as North Korea have also been testing missile technology. Hopefully, there will be no need for these missiles, ever.