A Close Encounter in the Baltic?

The media loves a sensational story, but the Swedes are a joyfully dour lot, not easily given over to hysteria. When the media reports that the Swedish Ocean X diving team discovered something unusual on their side-scan sonar, 300 feet (92m) deep in the Baltic Sea, perhaps we should take notice.

The team came across an object 200 feet (60m) long and 26 feet (8m) wide with sharp edges, perfectly straight lines and perfect right-angles throughout its structure. Markings on the seabed behind it resembled skid marks while the object itself appeared to be resting on a large pillar.

Assuming there was a natural explanation, the dive team leaders contacted geologists and marine biologists, who confessed they had seen nothing like it. According to Volker Bruchert, an associate professor of geology at Stockholm University, it's many thousands of years old.

Strangely, all the electronics on the Ocean X team's vessel ceased to work when they were directly over the object, but recovered once they moved away, leading the team to assume it was made of some type of metal. Even their satellite phone stopped working.

On the second visit a year later, they discovered what appeared to be a stairwell leading into the structure, raising to all sorts of questions. What caused the skid marks? Did this object crash-land thousands of years ago? Or is it remains of the mythical city of Atlantis? There's a thin line between reason and imagination.

Other scientists, however, have less fanciful theories, such as the anomaly is probably just a rock outcropping or the result of gas venting from the seafloor or a glacial deposit. None of the sonar images provides a reliable look at the Baltic Sea anomaly.

Even Peter Lindberg, the man behind the discovery, although wondering why it was not covered with silt, expressed skepticism about the object's supposed other-worldly origins when he said it's obviously not an alien spacecraft and it's not made of metal.

So far, nobody has come up with funding for future research, so it seems this Baltic Sea anomaly may forever remain a mystery. (from multiple sources)