On June 19, 2011, a group of maritime fortune hunters, while engaged in the harrowing pursuit of retrieving sunken treasure from Baltic shipwrecks got a sonar hit of a strange circular object located 285-feet (87-meters) below the surface of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland.

According to the report, the team was searching for shipwrecks full of profitable booty — in this case alcohol, which can be sold for a massive profit at auction — when three of the nine member crew spied the almost unbelievable image on the sonar screen; an image which may well be the first step toward one of the most phenomenal discoveries of the 21st Century.

Peter Lindberg — the leader of the Swedish Ocean Explorer team that discovered the unusual object in the depths of the Baltic — claimed that the as yet unidentified “thing” forms a perfect circle and is almost 197-feet (60-meters) in diameter. In his own words:

“You see a lot of weird stuff in this profession, but during my 17-18 years as a professional I have never seen anything like this. Shape, completely round the circle, makes this unique… all I know is that I’ve seen anything down there that is solid — stone, concrete or steel — and that is completely round.”

It goes without saying that this revelation has set the ufological world abuzz. Could this finally be it? Does the world finally have within its grasp tangible, concrete proof that we are being visited by aliens of unknown extraction who are piloting hyper-technological crafts in Earth’s airspace… and possibly below it?

The Swedish newspaper “Aftonbladet,” in an article titled “Mysterious circles in the Baltic Sea,” claimed that the unexplained object showed signs of having moved across the seabed. These excerpts have been translated from the article:

“Next to the circle is a 300 meter long slide track — as if the circle has traveled across the seabed before it has settled.”

Could this almost 1000-foot slide track be evidence that this object plummeted into the sea and came to a friction-forced halt as anything plummeting from the sky at tremendous velocity might? Or this another example of the many enigmatic USOs (Unidentified Submersible Objects) that have been so often reported around the waterways of the Scandinavian countries.

In fact, as recently as April 13th, 2011, a Swedish family by the name of Harge snapped photos from their beachfront property in Saltsjöbaden of a huge — and as yet unidentified — submarine-like object that apparently slipped through the Stockholm archipelago. The Harges also claimed that they: “…got the feeling that there was something very large under the surface.”

The head of the family diligently alerted the Armed Forces about the 328-foot (100-meter) object that observers said floated up to 3-feet (1-meter) above the waterline. Philip Simon, Press Officer on the Swedish Armed Forces, stated that possible violations of Swedish territory are always taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. While there is no evidence whatsoever that these two incidents are even remotely connected, it bears mentioning that citizens and the military of this region has had numerous run-ins with USO and so-called “phantom submarines.”

Whether or not this object proves to be of natural or extraterrestrial origin, according to expedition member, Dennis Åsberg, there is the possibility that the debris was dumped there by another nation such as Russia or Germany. According to (a roughly translated) Åsberg:

“Germans have been there, the Russians have been there, dumped a huge, yes. It is not inconceivable.”

If this is military or industrial refuse from one of these or another nation then two questions remain; how long has it been there and what the heck is it?

Could this be one of those infamous Nazi flying saucers that was ordered scuttled by the Third Reich high command before the Allies could get their hands on the technology? Probably not, but the thought is intriguing.

Andreas Olsson, a marine archaeologist at the National Maritime Museums in Sweden, studied the pictures of this circular object, but claimed that she required more information to be able to determine what it is.

That having been acknowledged, Lindberg and his team have evidently ruled out the possibilities. According to Aftonbladet”

“… they rule out theories that there is a depth bomb or mine from the First World War — or a symmetrical [algae] bloom… the most likely scenario is still that there is a natural ground formation.”

Since images of this perplexing circular object have made their way around the web, many have come forward with the notion that this potential “crashed UFO” bears an uncanny resemblance to Han Solo’s sweet intergalactic ride the legendary Millennium Falcon. Maybe they’re closer to the truth than they know.

So while Lindberg and the rest of Swedish Ocean Explorer team are going to continue the hunt for valuable bottles of submerged champagne the only question that remains is who will be the first to uncover the origins of this inexplicable object… and will whomever does plumb the depths of the Baltic to collect her mysteries divulge the secrets they uncover?