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Gigantic Spiral of Light Observed Over Norway; Rocket To Blame?
Ch_Omega writes "A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night (more pictures) has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing display to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor to a shock wave — although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its center — lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm — which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world." The Bad Astronomer makes the case that a malfunctioning rocket spewing fuel is a parsimonious explanation, backed up by witnesses to similar events and a cool simulation (on video). An anonymous reader suggests that this Proton-M Carrier Rocket might be responsible for the display.
Odin's back. And he's pissed. The spiral is his wide brimmed hat. And he's finally got his favorite blue laser back from Loki. Unfortunately he can only use it on one person per night. Huginn and Muninn are doing surveillance right now so it's time to get those shrines up in the backyard, people! Raise your cups of mead and abandon Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. The Norse were right, repent before it's too late! Finally, a reason to worship a deity I can identify with--Loki!
My work here is dung.
kill an alien?
There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
lol, maybe it was the LHC.
Sending Bogons back from the Future.
Best Slashdot Co
...although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet.
The reason nobody's mentioned UFOs yet is because whatever it was originated from the Earth. Unless I'm seriously mistaken, UFOs tend to come from space, not the ground.
BadAsstronomer seems to have picked up on a TV station's assertion that it was a russian ICBM test launch - it's certainly pretty, but unfortunately, not the black hole the LHC was supposed to bring us. Bastards.
Truck driver, plumber, Linux systems engineer.
All hands on deck: Swirly thing alert!
Its simply the aurora borealis caused by some escaped gasses from the planet Venus.
Now go back to sleep.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
...I for one...
Welcome our now very dizzy alien overlords...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Another possible explanation is that the original rocket was a target drone with rocket assisted take off. The light could have been a ground laser engaging the drone. If you've ever seen a test of a large scale laser, you can't really tell if the beam originates on the ground or from the target, if you can see it at all.
Although a 10 minute kill time challenges that theory. A laser anti-aircraft weapon for engaging targets that conveniently linger over the target area for an extended period of time. Not exactly a Death Star, is it?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I got this from the BA forum:
Blogs / Bad Astronomy
Terra spots a volcanic plume
Awesomely bizarre light show freaks out Norway
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[UPDATE: See bottom of post; I knew it!]
Earlier in the morning today (around 8:00 a.m. local time) this weird thing was seen over the skies of Norway:
norway_spiral
My first reaction when I saw that was, "What the FRAK is THAT?!" My second thought was, "Photoshop". But then I saw lots of pictures of this on a bunch of different Norwegian media, so I don't think it's a digital hoax. Then videos started surfacing, like this one, which clearly show the spiral spinning. It's not just a static picture, whatever this thing was; it was really in the sky.
However, after a moment, I realized this must be a rocket, most likely spiraling out of control. I don't understand all the details -- I don't have all the info yet -- but a rocket fits what we're seeing here. First, this was seen all over Norway, so it must have been at a high altitude to be so visible. Second, the blue spiral angling down to the right is clearly due to perspective. A rocket spiraling around, and coming up from the lower right, would appear to make tight spirals when it was far away and bigger ones as it got closer.
Third, you can actually see the bright white spiral spinning in the videos. That threw me for a second, to be honest, but after a moment I figured that it makes sense if the rocket is headed more or less straight toward the camera. Whatever it is being lit up (exhaust, or a leaking payload?) would appear to expand in a spiral like water from a spinning sprinklerhead. The spiral itself is not spinning any more than water from the sprinkler is; that's an illusion of motion.
norway_spiral2Fourth, after a few moments, a black disk appears to expand in the center of the white spiral, as seen in this picture (it's a little fuzzy; you can see the person taking it must have used a long exposure because foreground lights are jittery, but you get the idea). That's exactly what I would expect if whatever is being ejected by the rocket ran out; the arms of the spiral would expand away from the center, leaving black emptiness in the middle.
So that's my hypothesis. A rocket got out of control, perhaps losing a stabilizer, and started to spiral. The two spirals, different in shape, size, and color, indicate something happened in the middle of all this (the rocket second stage fired while still spinning, or something else started leaking out), changing the rocket's direction. Then, when the fuel or whatever ran out, the white spiral began to disappear from the inside out as the material expanded in space.
So who launched it? The Russians are a likely guess, but -shocker -- they're denying it. I'd love to know and find out what the details are, but whoever shot it up and whatever the purpose, I'm pretty sure what we're seeing here is a rocket launch that didn't go exactly according to plan.
Note: there are a lot of stories online about this with more very cool pictures: The Sun and The Daily Mail have it in English, while Norwegian media include VG Nett, Altaposten.no, NRK.no, Framtidinord.no, Nordlis.no, and amazing videos can be seen here and here.
UPDATE: From Doctor Atlantis I heard of this video which simulates particles being spewed out from a spinning rocket booster. Look familiar?
Photos: Jan Petter Jørgensen and Morten Kristiansen. Tip o' the payload bay to the many folks who alerted me to this story!
December 9th, 2009 10:47 AM Tags: Norway, rocket
by Phil Plait in Antiscience, Cool stuff, Pretty pictures, Skepticism | 58 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >
58 Responses to "Awesomely bizarre light show freaks out Norway"
1. 1. Kevin Says:
December 9th, 2009 at 10:53 am
That reminds me of something we saw waaay back in the late 1980's during a public night at our observatory.
Finally, we've found the entrance...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk.nyud.net/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html
http://i.dailymail.co.uk.nyud.net/i/pix/2009/12/09/article-1234430-07887B10000005DC-48_634x421.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk.nyud.net/i/pix/2009/12/09/article-1234430-0787DEA4000005DC-908_634x348.jpg
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These images are bizarre. In some of them, the light seems to be coming over the mountains in the background, almost as if it were being projected from on the ground. But this doesn't make sense, as a projected image would not ordinarily coalesce in one place in the sky, as it appears to have done. The Archimedean spiral formation that appeared seems too perfect to be the result of a weather formation. This does not look like any aurora that meteorologists have documented, so far as I'm aware. However, nature always has surprises for us uncomprehending humans. The stipulation that it was a rocket that had gone out of control also seems unlikely. Again, the image seems too perfect. I'm honestly stumped, but too skeptical to want to believe that this is alien contact.
The light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus. Everybody knows that!
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Sigh... this is why I should ALWAYS hit preview. Should have just posted this. http://www.frisnit.com/cgi-bin/navtex/view.cgi?id=1159919&lan=en&type=24H&message_filter=&search=ROCKET&station_filter=&date=2009-12-09&source=a4f7a470329caf85e2488355c7e88328&offset=0
Except that multiple images from multiple angles show a circular phenomenon, which means that the source must be roughly spherical.
Also, there are no clouds in any of the images.
Also, you're an idiot.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Damnit, apparently the earth is running OSX and somebody has tried to "undo" the last ten years; this has resulted in the spinning beach ball of death.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Ob. Men In Black:
"The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus."
Comment of the year
Protonks (AFAIK) are launched out of Baikonur Cosmodrome, thousands of miles southwest of Norway. I'm unsure how a launch in Kazakhstan would cause a light show in Norway, especially since the insertion into orbit proceeds east of the launch site.
It's just an experiment that the iRobot corp was conducting, where they cross a Roomba with one of their military devices. Apparently this is related to Bill Gates' theories that hurricanes can be controlled with the proper application of technology. Dean Kamen was not not available for comment on speculation that it was related to a Death Star marketing tie-in for his Luke "Skywalker" prosthetic hand project.
[
Obviously this is a result of what happened AFTER the helicopter hit the airbag.
I suspect people are mixing in Photoshopped hoaxes with real photos and/or real eye-witness accounts. The first thing do for an investigation is to verify which photos are real and which are bogus.
Table-ized A.I.
Since it's sabotage of the CERN collider has not been especially effective in preventing the restart of the collider, I believe that these spirals are a warning from a future Higgs boson. I urge CERN to immediately halt all testing until we receive more information from H b.
or maybe its a light show with artistic and strong projectors
I saw some pictures and some shaky video - it kinda reminds me of a laser light show. The blue haze cone of light points back to the source - but what do I know - I live in the cold in Idaho...
what? me worry?
I see no reason why the phenomenon couldn't be repeated 10+ years later with a more advanced tool.
Then you haven't seen the pictures of this thing, because there are no clouds on which to project an image.
My vote's on the rocket hypothesis. It's simpler than supposing somebody managed to project an image of spirals onto an invisible screen in the sky for no discernible reason.
Theory #3: A sky-writer pilot was making an "@" for an email address, but passed out.
Table-ized A.I.
Out of control doesn't not imply erratic, it simply means it cannot be controlled. A car going 90 mph in cruise control with a locked steering wheel and no breaks is 'out of control' in a 90 mph line assuming a flat course.
If the rocket was in a steady roll it could easily make a nigh perfect spiral if other conditions warrant. (Leaking/venting fuel is the current odds favorite?)
The dateline for the proton-m article is 2005 (which mentions satellite AMC-23), giving a launch date of Dec. 6, 2005. It even successfully launched!. I'm pretty sure that particular rocket wasn't responsible for the light show.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
if you missed it, I'll sell you a pair of these.
Table-ized A.I.
Unidentified? Check
Flying? Check
Object? Check
It's a UFO alright. Of course after it's identified, it will no longer be a UFO.
http://gfx.nrk.no/YOYD2X1CgNBSeaPse9LjVwT6ymkkphv7Q7x0aibAWJwg.jpg
If you've ever seen a rocket launch around sunrise or sunset, this is pretty obviously one of them. It should be a piece of cake to figure out the azimuth of this picture and deduce from where it was launched.
Case closed. Next...
I have to say 'thanks for the light show'. That's the most unusual thing I've seen in the sky!
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
Obama is soon in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Price Ceremony. Did you think Russia could just sit and watch?
Russia is well-known for creating such distress to their non-allies.
Frightened? Mission completed. End of story.
This is obviously the result of the Large Hadron Corridor.....Enter the Twilight Zone Peeps!!!
Close Encounter of The Third Kind! They are here!!
Ubisoft called it wants its logo back!
It was some kids at the local polytechnic having some fun with a laser light-show projector. I saw the video.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The explanation is simple. The plucky young upstart warrior (and perhaps the rest of his party) just defeated the final boss using his strongest-ever attack. One involving, say, exploding materia*.
What everyone saw was just the endgame cutscene for that (at a safe distance, of course).
* Materia is a Final Fantasy VII term. Substitute your favorite mystical RPG energy thingy here if you like.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
And Kim Jong's glasses fell off on the way. (He didn't watch enough Scooby Doo to learn that lesson.)
Table-ized A.I.
someone better call Gordon Freeman!!!
...I told you he was a liberal.
Table-ized A.I.
My vote's on the rocket hypothesis.
While I consider myself a skeptic, the "it's a rocket" explanation sounds really dubious to me - it's like hearing loud creaking noises and banging and saying "oh, it's just wind" - disregarding the fact that wind isn't capable of producing such noise.
IANARS, but I haven't ever seen anything even close to what the photos look like IRL, nor on any real photos, including those of various rocket launches, etc. Nor can I think of any sound reason as to why a flying or even exploding rocket may produce an effect such as this, especially the beam (keep in mind that it appeared after the rotating sphere, not before it).
If anyone who has a deeper understanding of the subject can come up with a sufficiently detailed and plausible explanation of how exactly a rocket may have caused this, I'm all ears.
Oh, as a side note (and to keep the conspiracy theory going), the "someone [Russians?] testing a new secret rocket" and "aliens!" theories are not mutually exclusive. If we see Poland invaded tomorrow from the east by hovertanks on antigravs with huge red stars painted of them, we'll know for sure.
I did too, in the earlier thread. I was hoping that it was an escaping magnetic monopole that caused auroral havoc.
But the destabilized rocket simulation has convinced me; it was a rocket.
At this point I'm wondering whether some US company can reproduce the effect, and sell rockets like that as fourth-of-july fireworks.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Im curious to know whether they are experimenting with a new copper chloride based propellant that gives off a blue flame, or another chemical that gives off a blue flame?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN_y5r7vHio
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
This was posted a few months ago but I have no idea when it happened. Look similar... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixLE3iuszbU Just skip to 35 seconds unless you can speak Chinese.
I suppose I could've left the cruise control bit out, but my thought process at the time was "I don't want friction to kick in so soon..."
The rest are necessary to remove any controlling aspect from the car. I could've said driverless, but someone would've chirped in "remote control!" for example, so I've found trying to rigidly define conditions a necessity for /.
So what you are saying is that the editors should be more parsimonious in their use of the English language?
Looking close, you can see a dish shaped object flanked by two cigar shped ones.
In other news, there was reports of a strange russion looking for nulcear wessels.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
it's like hearing loud creaking noises and banging and saying "oh, it's just wind" - disregarding the fact that wind isn't capable of producing such noise.
I think the people in New Orleans and Galveston might feel a bit differently!
This is my sig.
Nothing to worry about, this is a typical time-mass interfence pattern caused by a trans-galactic class rift engine reaching its firing potential while the host craft skims the atmosphere of a planet with its anti-graviton containment field slightly out of phase alignment.
Considering that Sol33087-3 (Earth) is also on the blue-list ('keep your distance') due to the operation of your Hadron collider (whose output can cause short-duration dimensional microfractures in rift engine stern waves), as regional observer I have reported the incident to the appropriate authorities together with readings from the unique anti-graviton signature of the engine and you can rest assured that the pilot/primary officer of the craft will be identified and interviewed, with appropriate action taken.
Erm - posting AC for obvious reasons.
> - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet
It's no fun buzzing Earth if there's no panic calling to authorities and calls for investigation of the subsequent coverup.
Bleezarp (from Alpha Centauri...)
That's because a UFO isn't an explanation -- a UFO is an "unidentified flying object". You could compare it to specific instances of unexplained aerial phenomena -- though that's unlikely to help explain it unless the conditions surrounding this occurrence help explain some whole class of previously-unexplained aerial phenomena -- but to compare it to UFOs in general is somewhat pointless since the only thing that that class shares in common is that they appear above the ground and are not explained.
Russian rocket fired from a submarine. The russians of course denies this because the rocked failed. Case closed, next!
This is just a stunt being pulled by the Higgs Boson to distract us away from the LHC, so we won't find it.
I love you guys.
Touch the untouchable,
Break the unbreakable
Row Row Fight The Powah!
Because we all pay attention to a person who can't even spell brakes correctly. Attention to detail is the first sign of a bullshitter.
I feel sorry for that school superintendent who got fired for running SETI@home on his school computer.
New Economic Perspectives
I agree, this looks like a rocket out of control, especially when you look at the videos.
But here's the one remaining question: what's the glowing blue-green "beam" shooting out from the center? It's not the launch trajectory of the rocket, because according to this site (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html) the green beam formed *after* the spiral was visible.
My guess: the rocket fuel gradually became ionized, and the glowing charged ions moved away from the rocket following along magnetic field lines.
Anybody know what cardinal direction these photos are taken in?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGrRTdolTv4
It's Venus flying through a weather balloon full of swamp gas. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
If anyone who has a deeper understanding of the subject can come up with a sufficiently detailed and plausible explanation of how exactly a rocket may have caused this, I'm all ears.
Bad Astronomer has a good write-up, and he certainly knows his stuff. It's corroborated by a comment on the blog there as well:
That reminds me of something we saw waaay back in the late 1980’s during a public night at our observatory. All of a sudden there was a gasp from the crowd, and we looked out the dome to see this bright glowing ball traveling south to north (mostly). When we moved the telescope over to it, we could see in the eyepiece a small object from which the stuff was jetting out from. Later we found out it was a booster stage venting unused propellant.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
I don't think this was a rocket of any kind. Consider the scale of the explosion if it was seen all over Norway on a given night. How big exactly was that burst of light, and how far away was it? Unless that was a honkin' big missile able to withstand who knows how many Gs of pressure from spinning tightly and then blowing up with a nuclear warhead, I don't believe that was a missile. Of course, I reserve the right to be completely wrong.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
http://bleen.ro/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/us-air-force-aircraft-identification-chart1.jpg
Those who remember the very good John Wyndham novel "The Day of the Triffids" (later made into a very bad movie) will recall that the population of most of the civilized world is transfixed by a spectacular show of mysterious lights in the sky. The first-person narrator is stuck in a hospital recovering from eye surgery with patches over his eyes and feels frustrated at being left out.
A few days later it turns out that everyone who saw the lights has gone blind, leaving the narrator one of the few people in the world who can still see.
The story suggests but never says that it is some space-based weapons system that was accidentally deployed.
So, when viewing mysterious and spectacular unexplained lighting phenomena in the sky, perhaps it would be prudent to keep one eye closed.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"While I consider myself a skeptic, the "it's a rocket" explanation sounds really dubious to m""
Because you are a skeptic is why you question it.
The linked photos are of a long exposure time. Actual videos of the event make it pretty clear it's a rocket spinning out of control and spews something out while it spins. Probably propellant. It's altitude is high enough to be in the Sun light.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Looks like CERN's particle collider is creating a blackhole!
The article about the Russian Proton-M Carrier Rocket is from Dec 7th of....2005?
...a la Youtube. Weren't the Russians experimenting with a type of wobbly missile with an unpredictable trajectory? And wouldn't a perfect spherical explosion like that mean it took place in zero gravity? Otherwise, must be nice living next to the wormhole. Your pagh is strong, my son.
If I paid as much attention to detail as you claim, I guess I would've double checked my homonyms.
Nice rebuttle though.
Way to not assume someone's on the roof with a paddle using friction to steer the car.
...I also would've caught the double negative I left in early on. (doesn't not.)
The remnant of a rewording that wasn't entirely highlighted and deleted.
I wish I had mod points to give you dude!
"Lame" - Galaxar
That's the Universal Operating System
It still seems like a remarkably symmetrical and near perfect circular pattern, for something that would have non-symmetric forces (ie, gravity) acting on it. Weird.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Though I disagree with you on your points, if I had mod points, I would have modded you awesome for the "Also, you're an idiot." There is a point to that.
If we see Poland invaded tomorrow from the east by hovertanks on antigravs with huge red stars painted of them, we'll know for sure.
You insensitive CLOD!
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
No butts about it
.. when there are no crops to flatten out.
Have gnu, will travel.
"must be roughly spherical. "
Or spinning.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
SEE?! SEE?!!
(Although now that I saw that I knew I should've forseen someone attaching a sail to it...paddle I likely never would've guessed though.)
a dimensional portal. Don't you watch scifi?
Though I don't really care if I agree, if I had mod points, I would have modded you insightful because throwaway insults don't get me screaming like a little girl. What was my point again?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
So what you are saying is that the editors should be more parsimonious in their use of the English language?
I'm proposing that promulgating such preposterous pronouncements precedes persiflage and paltry, even parsimonious praise.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
It seems he has gotten the aliens to crash on another country besides the UK this holiday season...
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
You haven't got any mod points so no one will read yours or my post, but this is, in hindsight, a perfect example of why UFO related observations get such an incredibly bad rap. I'm not attacking you personally per se, but yours is a near perfect example.
With obviously no knowledge of rocketry at all you're happy to put forward that
The stipulation that it was a rocket that had gone out of control also seems unlikely.
yet now that it's all been and gone this is exactly what it actually was. And this is why that lone observations from people that have seen 'something' carry virtually no weight. Without, or even with, experience in all relevant airborne related fields it's near impossible to be sure that what the majority of people have seen is anything other than the mundane that appears incredible to the untrained eye. Sufficently indistinguishable from magic, if you will.
And you weren't even there. Get a report from someone at the scene and you're suddenly including in hysteria, panic, adrenaline, and a whole other list of things that someone seeing something unfamilar will have affect their judgement. Put on top of all that a bias towards assigning anything unknown to an alien race and right there you have the perfect receipe for a completely mis-identified flying object.
I love this game. :)
Wind can make creaking and banging sounds. The wind can move doors, windows, or depending on the construction of the structure, it can shift the walls enough to make the wall, pieces in the wall, or even the roof or floor creak.
I was in a newer construction 2 story house on a hill, and strong winds would make the whole house move. I was glad I was only renting. :) The earthquakes would make it shift too, so it wasn't an ideal place to stay.
The stills were timelaps photos, that do look totally computer generated. There are videos that are clearly rockets with guidance problems.
It's already been identified to be a Bulava missile from the Typhoon submarine "Dmitri Donskoy" in the White Sea area. They had already announced their missile test, and had exclusive use of the area for launch. Nothing like hitting a fishing boat from the bottom with an ICBM to mess up your morning. :) Apparently it wasn't that surprising, most of their test have had rather dramatic failures.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I knew that never giving up on the GREATEST CONSOLE OF ALL TIME would reward me in the end.
THE DREAMCAST IS BACK PEOPLE, BOW BEFORE YOUR NEW GAMING GOD.
I love Sega.
One more dang illegal. Spewing green glowing stuff everywhere. Those dang Kryptonian rockets. They're *so* messy. Well, there goes the neighborhood....
Excuse me, I must go back to my secret lair now and shine my hairless head.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"must be roughly spherical. "
Or spinning.
Or high enough in the atmosphere that the "different angles" weren't actually that different.
Since it also would have to be that high to catch the light of the sun, this seems likely.
The enemies of Democracy are
"While I consider myself a skeptic, the "it's a rocket" explanation sounds really dubious to me - it's like hearing loud creaking noises and banging and saying "oh, it's just wind" - disregarding the fact that wind isn't capable of producing such noise."
As you point out, you're not a rocket scientist. Actual rocket scientists and others who have seen a lot of rocket launches have seen similar things before. If that's not enough for you, the Bad Astronomer has posted a simulation of the exhaust from a rocket tumbling out of control - the simulation looks just like the pictures.
There wasn't a known Proton-M launch this week. There was one on November 25, 2009. The article cited by the "anonymous poster" is from a 2006 launch.
Proton-M rockets are huge, and are launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. When one of those things is launched, it gets noticed.
Somebody local may have launched something, but it probably wasn't launched 1000 km away from Kazakhstan. There are pictures from multiple locations, and many show ground details. So get those pictures geo-located and aligned, and figure out where it came from.
He's back! He just got a retina scan. Hurry up and look busy.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
No need to be alarmed. It's just the "Bat Signal" for Techno Viking.
Its a higgs bosson traveling back to its time (to the future!), to get reinforcements to finally kill the evil LHC.
NO SIG
Either global warming, or one of the CRU unit paying the price in a flashy manner for their apparent misdeeds. Who knew...
It's probably just me, but I smell a cover up in the guise of a failed Russian missile launch ;)
... about 20 years ago, over Syktyvkar, Russia.
That was clearly a rocket (I saw rocket launches before, living downrange of Plesetsk), but at some point the thing has "stopped" in the sky and started rolling out a spiral. The rotating object and the spiral quickly faded away, but the gaseous afterglow along the ascent trajectory remained, as it usually does.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Isn't it a fruit?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Here is a well documented launch of an Minotaur rocket from Vandenberg AFB in 2005 which has some similarities:
http://www.spacearchive.info/minotaur-streak.htm
As for the spiral in I my opinion, depending on the perspective of the viewer relative to rocket you can see this pattern if you are looking at the exhaust end of the rocket and the rocket started to spin so that exhaust plume started to create a spiral. As the rocket lost total directional control, the rocket controller ordered a self-destruct so the sudden "hole" in the middle of the spiral as the rocket exhaust stops at the end of the event.
Here is another link about rocket trails with an expert description http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020926.html
DUH... The LHC gets fired up, and suddenly this kind of thing just randomly starts to happen? Suuuuuure.
Clearly, this was a mini black hole spawned by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and indeed they ARE harmless and just disappear after a few moments, or else we wouldn't have this little thread going on here, now would we?
Apparently no one here (or in Norway) has seen The Final Countdown. Has anyone reported recently returning from 1941? Is it a coincidence that this happened on Pearl Harbor Day? Ha, I think not!
(I'm not assuming that you are American, this is just one thing that bugs me). And what's with Americans saying "I could care less.". Well that's great that you could, over here in Australia we say couldn't care less, because that makes sense. /headdesk. /endrant.
This is neither the first time nor the second time this has happened. These videos show the exact same phenomenon exhibited in TFA. It's a rocket spinning mostly out of control, as reported here.
Russian officials stated as recently as Oct 22nd they would be deploying their new RS-24 ICBM “in 2009.” Why wait? It technically violated the START-I nonproliferation treaty, to which they were party. The ‘good’ news? The START-I treaty expired on Saturday, Dec 5th, 2009.
What makes the RS-24 special? Its widely-boasted ability to penetrate the US’s anti-ballistic-missile shield technology (e.g.: Tactical High Energy Lasers). There are a variety of theoretical ICBM laser countermeasures, and it looks like the Russians are trying at least two: 1) Oscillating Trajectory 2) Ablative gas shield. They may be coming from the same system, e.g.: the shield also causes the oscillations with a carefully vectored output.
Doesn’t hurt for leverage in the literally ongoing as I type renegotiation of a treaty to replace START-I. Also, doesn’t hurt that Obama’s scheduled to be in Oslo, Norway, for the Nobel Prize acceptance ceremony tomorrow.
"SUBCREATURES! Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, The Traveller has come! CHOOSE! CHOOSE AND PERISH...
[End Of Line]
It is an Aurora alright, like in the not so secret U.S. spyplane. Take that Ruskies!
an ill wind that blows no good
Wasn't there a James Bond movie of the Russians having this device?
"While I consider myself a skeptic, the "it's a rocket" explanation sounds really dubious to m""
Because you are a skeptic is why you question it.
The linked photos are of a long exposure time. Actual videos of the event make it pretty clear it's a rocket spinning out of control and spews something out while it spins. Probably propellant. It's altitude is high enough to be in the Sun light.
Also, images 3 and 5 from the second linked site in the summary show a cloud near the horizon that seems highly reminiscent of what a rocket would leave as it leaves the launch pad and heads skyward, illuminated by the setting sun. The cloud does not obviously link up with the other phenomena, but it isn't much of a stretch to connect a line between the two.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
John Crichton COME HOME!!!
"It's an imperfect world,screws fall out..."
Looks like a normal weather balloon to me...
The same effect, via trebuchet.
Somewhere deep in the California desert, at a super secret test site.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sMIO15gCQI
I think they're saying it's one of the least fanciful explanations. A bizarre use of the word parsimonious though; looks as if it was used by someone who wasn't at all familiar with it's common use. (Yeah, I know, it's not really commonly used, but generally it is used to mean stingy, cheap, frugal, thrifty, extremely unwilling/unlikely to spend money.)
This is what happens when someone breaks out their favorite five-dollar word so they don't have to say "likely" or "realistic".
Of course, I may be over-analyzing; there's always the possiblity that timothy had no freakin' idea what parsimonious meant.
Get a report from someone at the scene and you're suddenly including in hysteria, panic, adrenaline, and a whole other list of things that someone seeing something unfamilar will have affect their judgement.
You insult me as though I'm making assumptions when you're the one who is assuming. Hysteria? Panic? I specifically said I'm a skeptic to the idea that aliens put that in our sky, mainly because I'm skeptical of intelligent life being anywhere near our solar system. I didn't even reference the other people who had seen it specifically - I did address a few of the "theories" that I saw several people mention in various articles and comments - but I drew no strong conclusion in any direction. I'm well aware that things that a complete stranger says are subjective / subject to bias, since that's a fairly basic social concept.
The entire leading point of my post was that I had no good idea of what the object was. I didn't claim that my post was verifiable, nor did I claim I have any intensive knowledge of meteorology, rocketry, or physics even.
It wouldn't matter if I had claimed those things though, because I take no shame in being incorrect over something like this. As somebody reading a news article in my spare time, I don't have any responsibility to anyone beyond myself to make a completely informed comment.
There's villainy afoot!
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
I stared at that spinning little ball of light for like 3 minutes before I realized it was just waiting for the video to load.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
In an unrelated development, mysterious walking trees were found wandering the norwegian woods.
Experts predict they are an evolutionary response by the earth to substitute petroleum, just in time for copenhagen.
A few years ago I saw this: http://members.cox.net/starscopes/space_sky/20050922_vandenberg_rocket_launch.html while driving home from work. It looks more or less identical to the photographs from Norway. I can attest that it's an amazing site.
I meant to post this last night and never got around to it, but I was going to say, "Nah, it's the Nobel Peace Prize committee spinning out of control with regret!"
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
The Russians have admitted it was an ICBM test. They were trying a launch from a nuclear submarine from a submerged position in the White Sea. The third stage of the ICBM failed.
Just give them a copy of Vista
Ok, do you really want that the first thing ever for which human are going to be known for on the intergalactic scene is something as deeply disturbing and vicious as this ? and probably violating several of their interplanetary equivalents of the Geneva conventions ?!?
No, let's capture them and do medical experiments on them : it's much more kind and humane.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It still seems like a remarkably symmetrical and near perfect circular pattern, for something that would have non-symmetric forces (ie, gravity) acting on it. Weird.
Oh, so you subscribe to Nonsymmetric gravitational theory? I look forward to hearing your enlightened theories on advanced physics, professor!
Snarkiness aside, I must congratulate you for only saying it seems odd rather than insisting it can't be true because it defies your expectations like so many other people do. This is a great example of how our expectations can deceive us: objects in free fall behave the same way they'd behave in deep space, but since humans have virtually no experience with what free fall is like, their intuitions about it are wrong.
Or, maybe someone was trying to hypnotize Norway... http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/091210.html ...or failed trying to blow it up.
Remember this is in Norway. As in, a country close to the north magnetic pole of the Earth. What geometric pattern do ions follow in a magnetic field gradient like at the poles? A spiral or helix. Voila! But why two? Two different chemical species in the exhaust with two distinct masses and two distinct ionization recombination emission colors.
As a Brit, I was dissapointed that our Royal Air Force closed their UFO analysis division last week. I wittered in social media about how the RAF UFO division was an excellent team who investigated unidentified incursions into UK airspace, assessed them for threats, and passed on reports of possible enemy action to the rest of the UK military. The RAF UFO division was never about finding aliens, it was about assessing unidentified airborne threats.
I'm now beginning to think I should have been a lot more vocal, writing to my MP instead. What if that had been a missile launch over Scotland instead of Norway?
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
What the heck does some theory about galaxy shape have to do with this?
On earth (ie according to our local reference frame), gravity exerts force in one direction; down. So, if the rocket was simply firing a specific thrust causing circular motion in a vertical plane, one would expect the downward part of each arc to be accelerated by gravity, and the upward part to be resisted, breaking the symmetry of the circle.
That particle simulation is all well and good, but it seems to be an idealized simulation... it's what I would expect to see in zero g, for example, I don't see how that simulation takes gravity into account.
Of course, assuming the rocket is providing constant thrust is pure conjecture, it's entirely possible the flight control system (while clearly malfunctioning) is perfectly compensating for the effects of gravity, adjusting thrust according to orientation.
That would be an argument from incredulity; I don't do fallacies. I would never take my casual layman's observation as anything remotely conclusive, I just thought it might make an interesting point for discussion.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
This phenomenon is a sign that today we live in a most extraordinary time in history.
Some will know that a year has passed since Share International released a news release, where they predicted that very soon a bright star-like sign would appear in our skies, visible day and night. This 'star' was to be similar in its nature to the biblical Star of Bethlehem - announcing that a great teacher for our time is among us and is ready to step forward into the public, having his first public interview on one of the major american television networks.
Many will also know that such a 'star' has indeed appeared not a month after the prediction, and that Share International magazine has every month since then published a number of photos and reports of the 'star', coming from all parts of the world. Likewise many people uploaded their own videos and reports to and talked about it on forums and blogs.
The latest information from Share International is that this spiral over Norway was yet another instance of the 'star', this time showing itself in such a spectacular way. Further such manifestations are to be expected in the near future.
See "The 'Star' Sign" on.