What's That Mystery Object On An Australia Beach? TikTok Has A MIGHTY Good Guess

On July 17, global news outlets like the BBC began reporting that a mysterious object appeared on a beach near the town of Green Head located in Western Australia, a little over two hours north of Perth. Naturally, bystanders online immediately began speculating about this cylindrical brass object's identity. While plenty of amateur sleuths attempted to accurately discern its origin, a short video by TikTok user @randomvideos99999 went viral for pointing out an uncanny link between it and a TV supervillain that plenty of '90s kids surely remember.

The video — which received over 190,000 likes and kicked off a discussion more than 3500 comments long — opens on footage of a news anchor in front of the brass cylinder beneath text on-screen that reads, "they opened the object," followed by four surprised-face emojis. Then, a close-up of the cylinder cuts to a short clip of original "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" series villain Rita Repulsa (Machiko Soga) emerging from imprisonment in an intergalactic dumpster as her original English-language voice actor Barbara Goodson yells triumphantly in her iconic, raspy voice.

While the object is most likely human in origin, Australian authorities may want to keep the Power Rangers on standby just in case its purpose is, in fact, to house an alien witch obsessed with world domination.

While Rita Repulsa's dumpster prison originates from a planet elsewhere in the galaxy and the mysterious Australian object was almost certainly constructed on Earth, according to some experts the brass cylinder most likely fell from outer space before washing up near Green Head. Shortly after its discovery, for example, rocket ship engineer Andrea Boyd told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that she suspects the item was once part of an Indian rocket ship used to launch a satellite into the Earth's atmosphere. "We're pretty sure based on the shape and the size, it is an upper-stage engine from an Indian rocket that's used for a lot of different missions," she said.

She then explained that determining precisely which satellite the rocket accompanied is challenging, given that, while the mystery object looks old, the time it remained underwater may have aged it artificially.

In a Reddit thread about the space cylinder, the most upvoted comment identifies the object as a rocket part. However, the next-most upvoted response, by user DiamondDoggitt, quotes none other than Rita Repulsa, proving that the cylinder containing anything less than an intergalactic supervillain might come as a bit of a letdown to some.