This is the bizarre moment a purported UFO zoomed towards a swirling vortex of clouds and vanished into thin air.

The eerie footage was captured in the sky above the Large Hadron Collider - a complex particle collider based at the European particle physics laboratory CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.

The video was posted on YouTube by the Section 51 2.0 channel alongside the description that it was captured by two American tourists.

The bizarre clip shows clouds swirling at speed in the sky above the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland

An orb of light appears from nowhere and immediately begins travelling towards the vortex at high speed

The clip shows clouds swirling at speed in the sky above the nuclear research tunnels.

Suddenly an orb of light appears from nowhere in the bottom right of the frame and immediately begins travelling at speed towards the centre of the vortex.

The filmmaker, who could be heard expressing his amazement at the swirling clouds only moments earlier, fails to acknowledge the sudden appearance of this orb.

But zooms in on it as it reaches the very centre of the vortex and seemingly disappears into another dimension.

The filmmaker zooms in on the orb but fails to vocalise his amazement like he did when he spotted the clouds

The video concludes moments later when the clouds suddenly follow suit and vanish alongside the ball of light.

Since appearing online the video has been viewed a quarter of a million times but its authenticity has been called into debate.

A number of YouTube users have suggested the UFO was created using CGI.

Other users disagreed with this theory however, with one writing: 'It's crazy how lost most of you are when it comes to this stuff.

The orb reaches the very centre of the vortex before seemingly disappearing into another dimension

'CGI?? Really? Not even the best or most powerful computers could generate a visual like that!'

Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, the Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most powerful particle collider in the world.

The LHC enables physicist to collide particles at velocities approaching the speed of light, and was most notably used to discover the Higgs boson, or God particle, in 2012.

It is hoped that the information will eventually help us to understand how the universe began.