Unidentified flying objects (UFO) may appear in 2011 or 2012, a Chinese astronomer has predicted.
Wang Sichao, an astronomy and minor planet scholar, made the forecast under recently-heated speculations about UFOs, as some unidentified flying objects have been spotted in several Chinese regions of Zhejiang, Hunan, Chongqing and Xinjiang since last month, the China Daily reported.
A UFO spotted in Zhejiang's provincial capital of Hangzhou disrupted air traffic over east China for an hour in early July. Some media reports said the UFO might have been a private aircraft, because of the increasing number of privately owned aircraft.
As for what British cosmological physicist Stephen Hawking claimed about aliens in April this year, saying "an alien encounter could have bad consequences for humans and earth had better watch out", Wang called it too early to make a conclusion.
Wang also urged scientists to design and create more advanced and agile telescopes in order to observe the unidentified flying objects that usually turn up on occasion, often for only seconds at a time, the report said.