BUGA SPHERE

Opening

In early March 2025, people near the town of Buga, in the Valle del Cauca region of western Colombia, filmed a glowing object moving strangely across the sky. Soon afterwards a local man produced a polished metal ball about the size of a bowling ball, smooth, heavy and covered in carved symbols, and said it was the thing that had come down. Within weeks the "Buga sphere" was on news sites around the world, X-rays of its insides were being shared online, and Mexican ufologist Jaime Maussan had taken it up. Some called it alien technology. Others, including two of the best-known scientists in the UAP field, think it was made on Earth.

Timeline

2 March 2025. The date given in most reports for the sighting. Videos from at least two sources show a bright orb moving in jumps across the sky near Buga, and residents say it zigzagged before coming down near power lines.

March 2025. A local man recovers a metal sphere. Early accounts say it felt ice-cold, that handling it left a metallic taste, and that it seemed to wear down the finger pads of the people holding it so their phones would not recognise their fingerprints. The family keeps it at a relative's metalworking shop.

April to May 2025. Radiologist José Luis Velázquez leads scans of the object. He reports no visible welds, seams or screws, three layers of metal-like material inside, small spheres arranged around a central core, and something he likens to a chip. The X-ray images spread worldwide.

Spring 2025. Jaime Maussan, the Mexican journalist who presented the Nazca "mummies" to Mexico's Congress in 2023, becomes involved, and arranges for the sphere to be examined in Mexico.

Mid 2025. Claims multiply: that the symbols are an ancient script, that the object holds dozens of fibre-optic strands, that its weight and hardness change. Readings of the symbols, some produced with AI tools, talk of unity, energy and the origin of birth.

2025. Stanford's Garry Nolan, who has studied UFO materials for years, puts the odds at about 99 percent that it is a terrestrial object made from ordinary materials such as fibre optics. Neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge says it looks to her more like an art project than a spacecraft.

Later in 2025. Videos of similar spheres from elsewhere in Colombia, including a "Yumbo sphere", begin to circulate.

Key figures

The finder and his family have mostly stayed out of the spotlight, and different reports give different names. José Luis Velázquez is the radiologist whose scans made the object famous, and the strongest scientific voice for an unusual origin. Jaime Maussan has the highest profile, and also the most disputed record: his earlier claims, including the Nazca bodies, have been heavily challenged.

On the sceptical side are two people who cannot be written off as debunkers. Garry Nolan has spent years analysing alleged UFO materials, including with Jacques Vallée. Julia Mossbridge is a researcher who works on consciousness and anomalous experiences. Both take the wider UAP question seriously, and neither was convinced by this object.

Physical and documentary trail

There is less here than the headlines suggest. There are the videos, the X-ray images, statements from Velázquez and Maussan's team, and many interviews. There is no peer-reviewed study of the sphere, no published analysis of what metals it contains from an independent laboratory, and no public chain of custody linking the object in the hand to the light in the sky. That last gap matters most: nobody has shown that the orb people filmed and the sphere on the table are the same thing.

Things you might not know

• It was supposed to steal fingerprints. One of the strangest early claims was that holding the sphere smoothed the handlers' fingertips so that their phones would not unlock.
• Its weight was said to change. Reports claimed it weighed about 2 kilograms when found and much more a few days later. No independent weighing has been published.
• The symbols look like several alphabets at once. People have compared them to Norse runes, Irish Ogham and Mesopotamian cuneiform, which is part of why sceptics think they were designed to look ancient.
• The videos have jumps in them. Analysts noted that the orb seems to skip position in the footage, especially as it passes behind trees, which can be a sign of editing.
• Garry Nolan put a number on it. The Stanford scientist, who co-wrote a paper with Jacques Vallée on UFO metal, said there was about a 99 percent chance it was made on Earth.
• Florida had one first. In 1974 the Betz family found a heavy, polished metal sphere on Fort George Island in Florida that seemed to roll around on its own. The US Navy examined it and found stainless steel. It became one of the most famous mystery objects of the 1970s.

Competing explanations

A real anomalous object. Velázquez's scans show a layered internal structure with no visible joins, and residents saw something in the sky. Supporters say the sphere's construction is hard to reproduce, and that its symbols and internal design suggest a purpose nobody yet understands.

A human-made sculpture or art piece. This is the view of Nolan and Mossbridge. Layered metal spheres, fibre optics and carved symbols are all things a skilled metalworker or artist can make. The object's look, part ancient relic and part science fiction, fits an art project well.

A deliberate hoax. Sceptics point to the jumps in the video, the shifting claims about weight and temperature, the AI-generated "translations" and Maussan's track record. A hoax does not have to involve the family that found it: someone else could have planted the object, made the videos, or both.

Later life of the case

The Buga sphere became one of 2025's biggest UFO stories online and set off a wave of copycat sphere videos. Promised tests, including carbon dating and further laboratory analysis, have not produced published results. Where the sphere is now and who holds it is not clear from public sources.

Finding

The strongest reading is that the Buga sphere was made on Earth. Two scientists who are open to the UAP question, Garry Nolan and Julia Mossbridge, both concluded as much, and the claims around it have grown wilder as the evidence has stayed thin. The people of Buga may well have seen something in the sky on 2 March 2025. Nobody has shown it was this ball.

What still will not resolve: what is inside it, and who made it. An independent lab analysis of its metals would settle most of the argument, and it has never been published.