A mysterious object, which researchers have named as WT1190F, is expected to enter the Earth's atmosphere and crash into the Indian Ocean next month if it is not burned completely during the plunge.
The unidentified flying object (UFO), which experts suspect to be a rocket body or a piece of space junk, is expected to plummet into the Indian Ocean about 100 km off the southern coast of Sri Lanka at around 06:19 GMT (11:49 local; 07:19 CET) on 13 November 2015, according to European Space Agency (ESA).
Interestingly, some religious conspiracy theorists have claimed that the world may not come to an end but the event, which falls on 13 November, the third Friday 13 this year, could be taken as a sign of the second coming of Jesus Christ and Judgement Day. But this proposition is baseless with no scientific basis.
Experts said that WT1190F doesn't have sufficient mass to cause any disaster when it falls. It will instead brighten up the skies for a few seconds as it descends into the earth's atmosphere and give researchers am opportunity to improve knowledge of objects' endurance with the atmosphere.
"The object is quite small, at most a couple of metres in diameter, and a significant fraction if not all of it can be expected to completely burn up in the atmosphere," said Tim Flohrer from ESA's Space Debris Office at the ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
"NEO (near-earth object) experts have used observational data to estimate the object's density, which turns out to be much less than that of the solid rocky material that comprises many asteroids," said Detlef Koschny from ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme office.
According to experts at ESA's NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC), ESRIN, Italy, the mysterious unidentified flying object dubbed WT1190F could be a discarded rocket body that has been orbiting Earth eccentrically.
