Residents apprehend alien invasion as sky turns pink in an Australian town 

Who doesn’t love a well-woven alien invasion story? Well, it turns out that the story almost came true. At least that’s what the residents of Mildura, a town in northern Victoria, Australia, will tell you. Okay, so here’s what happened. The sky suddenly turned pink, leaving the locals in Mildura confused and spellbound at the same time. And guess what, the immediate responses were more than amusing. While some speculated a possible alien invasion, others imagined it to be a portal to spacetime continuum. Some even thought that it was the southern hemisphere version of the famous northern lights, called the aurora australis. Thanks to the internet, photos and videos of the event spread rapidly with theories going haywire. But what actually triggered that pink glow in the sky? Read on to find out! 

The cannabis effect: An anti-climax 
Before expounding the real cause, let’s make one thing clear: This sudden ‘pink’ phenomenon had nothing to do with the extra-terrestrial world, nor was it a celestial event. Okay, so here it goes: The source of the much-talked about pink hue was a local medicinal cannabis facility owned by a pharmaceutical company named Cann Group where the blackout blinds were mistakenly left open.  

So long, the location of this cannabis facility was unknown to people and this incident almost disclosed an otherwise well-guarded secret. Recently, the facility got its license to both cultivate and supply a wide range of medicinal cannabis products in-house. As a result, production was on a high and somehow the blinds were not shut. Notably, medicinal cannabis was legalised in Australia in 2016. However, its recreational use as an illegal drug is still prohibited.  

Explained: Cannabis and blackout blinds 
Cannabis is a tall plant, native to the Australian subcontinent that is infamous for its mildly euphoriant quality. In other words, if consumed illegally, cannabis can cause sedation and often intoxication in people. It is, in fact, a hallucinogenic drug. However, if purified, it can act as an essential raw material for certain pain medicines.  

Coming to blackout blinds, there’s a small story here. For proper and rapid growth, cannabis plants need different spectrums of light, especially red. Now, the cannabis facilities incorporate these blackout blinds (especially at night), in order to block the entry of these light spectrums into the local human settlements. But in Mildura, the red light escaped through the open blackout blinds giving the sky an unusual pinkish hue.