Search for Patensie ‘meteorite’ to continue as alien theories abound
THE search for the mysterious “meteorite” which Patensie residents believe hit the Baviaanskloof Nature Reserve on Sunday night is set to continue as theories also start flying – including one that aliens are searching the area’s orange farms for Vitamin C.
Kouga Municipality spokesman Mfundo Sobele said the search would resume today for the mysterious object which residents in Cambria, near Patensie, say illuminated the sky with a bright turquoise colour before it fell to the ground at about 9pm on Sunday.
Many residents from Uitenhage, Patensie, Loerie and Cambria say they saw a bright flash of light and then felt a sudden impact which caused windows and doors in their homes to shake and rattle.
People as far as Jeffreys Bay and Port Elizabeth also witnessed the light, which they said looked like a shooting star.
With her tongue firmly in her cheek, a caller to The Herald – who said she was from Patensie – said yesterday the object was not a meteorite, but a spaceship from another planet.
“There are aliens in Patensie. They came here because they want Vitamin C. They do not have Vitamin C on their planet anymore so they decided to come here because Patensie has all the orange farms,” she said.
The woman claimed to have seen the spaceship on a farm just outside Patensie.
Sobele said the municipality’s disaster management team would be joined by SAPS members and rangers at the Baviaanskloof Nature Reserve to search for the object.
“In the meantime we are hoping that if anyone comes across it they will alert us. It is a large piece of land so we do not know how much ground we will have to cover.”
Case Rijsdijk, a member of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa, said it would be difficult to ascertain what residents saw without video or photographic evidence.
“At this point I am fairly sure that it was a meteor. People have all given the right type of descriptions for it. However, if this is a meteor it will also be very difficult to find as it could have landed anywhere,” he said.