On July 7th, residents of Hangzhou, China, bore witness to a peculiar airborne display over Xiaoshan Airport. Onlookers were baffled by the appearance of a comet-like object that passed slowly over the airspace of the airport, leaving a long, luminous trail behind it as it went. Authorities were quick to shut down operations until nearly an hour later, though no official explanation has been provided. What’s more, the object or objects were seen both during daylight hours and in the evening.

However, a new story released recently offers the opinion that what witnesses saw on the 7th was nothing more than a Chinese missile launch, meant to test the country’s new missile defense shield. This would seem to corroborate with speculation that an official explanation was not forthcoming because it was of a military matter. If this is the case, it makes one wonder what the capabilities of these purported missiles are, as the objects in the videos appear to be moving much more slowly than standard long-range projectiles typically do.

At the same time, there is a huge plume of vapor being spewed behind the object, and no long, cylindrical body to suggest the standard missile shape. Also, it doesn’t seem to make sense to fire a missile over inhabited areas without prior warning of the populace, or at the very least the authorities — populations have panicked for much less, as anyone who remembers Orson Welles’s classic radio play version of War of the Worlds can attest.

Watch the video below and draw your own conclusions. This is a UFO in its classic sense — an unidentified flying object — but is it man-made? Should we worry about an impending alien invasion? Is it nothing more worrisome than a missile test (if thoughts of a missile test don’t bother you, that is)?