Blogs / Bad Astronomy
Terra spots a volcanic plume Awesomely bizarre light show freaks out Norway submit to reddit
[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.
Last downturn I was offered management positions in my corporation twice over a year, and I declined both times. I would have gotten a modest salary raise, a less than modest increase in workload, and lost many technical skills i had in the process. I'm still here (as is the person who ended up saying yes).
If you are valued, then they will value you no matter where you are. You can trade the fact that you are more expendable on the bottom of the pyramid, with the fact that you will may have more useful job skills (I suspect there are a lot more middle-management types out of work, then technically skilled individuals).
I'm sick and tired of "Experts" telling me how to do things. When you spend your whole life studying one thing, you end up knowing nothing. Common sense is all you need.
Now I'm off to read the horoscope to see if I should buy a lottery ticket.
It was free to start, but players were - even last week - told that they could buy (and spend) "Battlefunds", but never to buy in game advantages. So there are many players who spent money on clothing, when they should have saved their $$$s for weaponry. Definitely a bait and switch.
From their own FAQ (with my updates):
Quote:Battlefunds can NOT be used to buy yourself a real advantage in the game. I.e. you cannot buy bigger, better weapons with Battlefunds
OUT OF DATE - weapons can ONLY be purchased with BF. VPs can only be used to demo a weapon for a very limited period of time.
Quote:Valor Points CAN be used to buy yourself a real advantage in the game. I.e. you CAN buy bigger, better weapons with Valor Points
WRONG! Only Battlefunds can be used to buy yourself an advantage in game. You can only try a weapon for a limited period of time with VPs.
They did this model and people were buying. Lots of people actually.
This was a profitable venture. The engine was developed years ago. The paid staff for this game is less than 10 people. Possible closer to half a dozen full time people. So the question isn't about being profitable, but about being MORE profitable.
The problem here is that they continue to insist nothing has changed - while it is quite clear that the new business model is completely different. Thats what is so infuriating - the refusal to admit that anything has changed, while the core philosophy of the game is completely different.
Previously you could only buy "fluff" (emotes, costumes, skins for your weapons) - and they asked you to spend your $$$ to "help the game".
Now the in-game currency you could earn from play is worthless, no one can afford to purchase weapons with these earned credits. But... no problem. Now you can buy weapons for REAL money (which you previously could not) - even better, you can get "super" versions of the same weapon for MORE real money.
So now there is a two tier system - players who pay and players who don't. The players who pay, win. That simple.
If thats what they want to do, fine. But don't tell me that free players are not at a disadvantage in all your advertising - thats blatantly false.
This was previously true. They matched by ELO - so all the sucky players would see each other.
Now you are matched by "experience" (aka amount played), which most likely means you will have a mix of players who are using the default "lame" weapons, and the paying customers using the upgraded "uber" weapons. Guess who does better?
Sad truth is, there was only one candidate out there who liked the idea of NASA. Hillary. If you gave a damn about space, you voted for her. After she was out... NASA was screwed.
Obama - said early on he'd cut NASA for education funds. McCain could care less one way or another if memory serves.
Obama heralds the age of no more manned NASA. About the only hope for US manned ambition is Dragon, or a COTS contract.
About the most optimistic thing I can say about this, is that maybe killing off manned space will free up room for more awesome robotic missions (Terrestial Planet Imager, I'm looking at you!). Who knows? Maybe he'll punt, and we'll abandon the moon for visiting an asteroid (which always sounded more interesting to me anyway).
Nevada? Whats the use of beach front property without fresh water to make ice with while I lounge around sipping margaritas? Nah... I'm investing in cheap Adirondack property. Beach front AND water reserves.
You can't tell me all of that soot is a good thing
Yes. It may kill you, but the reflective soot in the air does counteract the CO2, methane, etc... by "cleaning" the air, we inadvertently made the global warming problem worse. No more soot to seed clouds or stop those solar rays from warming the Earths surface
But as a selfish SOB, I'm still fine with the decision. I like the idea of beach front property, and don't like breathing in soot.
Don't get too excited by the Green River shale solving all our problems - that stuff has to be stripped mined out, and then processed with water... a lot of water in drought prone areas... so your # barrels per day from the deposit is never going to be high enough to meet domestic needs.
Eh - the ads are easy to ignore... sometimes they are actually amusing on their own (petition for something stupid? Gotta read that closely). As for content... thumbing through today's NY times, I see 30-40 pages of content, not even counting the weekly lifestyle sections (which, hypocrite that I am, I still skim through since its right in front of me).
People may mock the Times, but I don't see anyone else in the US covering Heroin sales in SE Asia (today's International section top story). Between that and my local weekly, I usually feel fairly well informed.
So... is it snooty of me that I like my articles to be well researched and polished? Do they get stuff wrong - sure - but I'm not expecting the Truth with a capital T and without mistakes. I do expect them to catch the mistakes (eventually) and let me know when they do. But they don't tend to fuck up the in depth stuff, and thats what I like.
As for comments... are we talking about the DailyKos site where I have to wade through so much ignorance, posturing, pomposity, and outright shit, that I feel like I have to shower after I read through the comments section (and thats just on the stories where I agree with with their slanted view)? That's the future?
The internet is fine for opinion - even expert opinion - if you know where to go. Or for hyper-detailed analysis of crap only a few care about, but passionately (the ongoing hour-by-hour progress of the new World Trade Center construction in NY for example).
But where can I find a single place, where someone will inform me of interesting things, without me having to wade through the crap and "edit" it myself? Not to mention the in depth coverage of things that are important, but not sexy, and slow moving to boot?
Where is the internet equivalent of NPR? Or PBS/Frontline? Or the NY Times international section. Or the Wall Street Journal business section? So far - its the websites of those respective organizations...
That is true for both the time your paying for and the money you are asked to pay.
A blog dashed off in a few minutes (or hours), will never compare to the in-depth reporting that most newspapers still actually deliver. For that I'm willing to pay (and do).
If newspapers ever died, they would drag all the other mediums that have news down with it... most tv/cable/radio/internet copy I've ever seen is lifted from an old dead tree newspaper.
Not to mention - some of us LIKE real news. You know, stuff that isn't about sports, or celebrities, or the horoscope, or the comics, or crap like that. The only hard news you get out of blog posts are just glorified wire reports - sure I can find out about big events like an earthquake, but where am I going to find out about corruption in China? Or inflation in Zimbabwe? Stuff that is ongoing, slow, and less sexy - that require coverage over years. Cable news gave up stories like that a long time ago - all that's left for that in the US is PBS, NPR, and the big print (NY Times, WSJ, etc).
Interestingly - I have noticed that some print media is doing well (at least round me), the hyper-local weeklies that cover individual towns and villages in my area (as opposed to the area at large). Another area completely un-served by the web.
Half those exec's are probably dead broke, washed away by the market crash at the end of the new gilded age. If they aren't now, they will be in a year or two, when the commercial real estate collapses like the residential one, all the ARM's start resetting, and the stock market bubble pops again.
We may have new royalty, but the now constant churn means that the Wheel of Life from the dark ages is ever more apt. They won't be up top for long...we all get whats coming to us...eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
I meant to only include the last entry... frigging copy and paste in FF failed me... my fault - should have previewed.
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
I got this from the BA forum:
Blogs / Bad Astronomy
Terra spots a volcanic plume
Awesomely bizarre light show freaks out Norway
submit to reddit
[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.
Last downturn I was offered management positions in my corporation twice over a year, and I declined both times. I would have gotten a modest salary raise, a less than modest increase in workload, and lost many technical skills i had in the process. I'm still here (as is the person who ended up saying yes).
If you are valued, then they will value you no matter where you are. You can trade the fact that you are more expendable on the bottom of the pyramid, with the fact that you will may have more useful job skills (I suspect there are a lot more middle-management types out of work, then technically skilled individuals).
I'm sick and tired of "Experts" telling me how to do things. When you spend your whole life studying one thing, you end up knowing nothing. Common sense is all you need.
Now I'm off to read the horoscope to see if I should buy a lottery ticket.
What game are you playing? You get no VP for kills. 7 for a win, 3-7 for a loss.
It was free to start, but players were - even last week - told that they could buy (and spend) "Battlefunds", but never to buy in game advantages. So there are many players who spent money on clothing, when they should have saved their $$$s for weaponry. Definitely a bait and switch.
From their own FAQ (with my updates):
Quote:Battlefunds can NOT be used to buy yourself a real advantage in the game. I.e. you cannot buy bigger, better weapons with Battlefunds
OUT OF DATE - weapons can ONLY be purchased with BF. VPs can only be used to demo a weapon for a very limited period of time.
Quote:Valor Points CAN be used to buy yourself a real advantage in the game. I.e. you CAN buy bigger, better weapons with Valor Points
WRONG! Only Battlefunds can be used to buy yourself an advantage in game. You can only try a weapon for a limited period of time with VPs.
They did this model and people were buying. Lots of people actually.
This was a profitable venture. The engine was developed years ago. The paid staff for this game is less than 10 people. Possible closer to half a dozen full time people. So the question isn't about being profitable, but about being MORE profitable.
The problem here is that they continue to insist nothing has changed - while it is quite clear that the new business model is completely different. Thats what is so infuriating - the refusal to admit that anything has changed, while the core philosophy of the game is completely different.
Previously you could only buy "fluff" (emotes, costumes, skins for your weapons) - and they asked you to spend your $$$ to "help the game".
Now the in-game currency you could earn from play is worthless, no one can afford to purchase weapons with these earned credits. But... no problem. Now you can buy weapons for REAL money (which you previously could not) - even better, you can get "super" versions of the same weapon for MORE real money.
So now there is a two tier system - players who pay and players who don't. The players who pay, win. That simple.
If thats what they want to do, fine. But don't tell me that free players are not at a disadvantage in all your advertising - thats blatantly false.
This was previously true. They matched by ELO - so all the sucky players would see each other.
Now you are matched by "experience" (aka amount played), which most likely means you will have a mix of players who are using the default "lame" weapons, and the paying customers using the upgraded "uber" weapons. Guess who does better?
Not fun.
I'm guessing not...
Sorry - I should have said - Hillary was the only serious candidate who supported space.
Sad truth is, there was only one candidate out there who liked the idea of NASA. Hillary. If you gave a damn about space, you voted for her. After she was out... NASA was screwed.
Obama - said early on he'd cut NASA for education funds.
McCain could care less one way or another if memory serves.
Obama heralds the age of no more manned NASA. About the only hope for US manned ambition is Dragon, or a COTS contract.
About the most optimistic thing I can say about this, is that maybe killing off manned space will free up room for more awesome robotic missions (Terrestial Planet Imager, I'm looking at you!). Who knows? Maybe he'll punt, and we'll abandon the moon for visiting an asteroid (which always sounded more interesting to me anyway).
Nevada? Whats the use of beach front property without fresh water to make ice with while I lounge around sipping margaritas? Nah... I'm investing in cheap Adirondack property. Beach front AND water reserves.
uh... thats 20 MILLION barrels a day - not 20 BILLION. So thats 75,000 days of oil. Or 200 years.
You can't tell me all of that soot is a good thing
Yes. It may kill you, but the reflective soot in the air does counteract the CO2, methane, etc... by "cleaning" the air, we inadvertently made the global warming problem worse. No more soot to seed clouds or stop those solar rays from warming the Earths surface
But as a selfish SOB, I'm still fine with the decision. I like the idea of beach front property, and don't like breathing in soot.
Don't get too excited by the Green River shale solving all our problems - that stuff has to be stripped mined out, and then processed with water... a lot of water in drought prone areas... so your # barrels per day from the deposit is never going to be high enough to meet domestic needs.
Eh - the ads are easy to ignore... sometimes they are actually amusing on their own (petition for something stupid? Gotta read that closely). As for content... thumbing through today's NY times, I see 30-40 pages of content, not even counting the weekly lifestyle sections (which, hypocrite that I am, I still skim through since its right in front of me).
People may mock the Times, but I don't see anyone else in the US covering Heroin sales in SE Asia (today's International section top story). Between that and my local weekly, I usually feel fairly well informed.
So... is it snooty of me that I like my articles to be well researched and polished? Do they get stuff wrong - sure - but I'm not expecting the Truth with a capital T and without mistakes. I do expect them to catch the mistakes (eventually) and let me know when they do. But they don't tend to fuck up the in depth stuff, and thats what I like.
As for comments... are we talking about the DailyKos site where I have to wade through so much ignorance, posturing, pomposity, and outright shit, that I feel like I have to shower after I read through the comments section (and thats just on the stories where I agree with with their slanted view)? That's the future?
The internet is fine for opinion - even expert opinion - if you know where to go. Or for hyper-detailed analysis of crap only a few care about, but passionately (the ongoing hour-by-hour progress of the new World Trade Center construction in NY for example).
But where can I find a single place, where someone will inform me of interesting things, without me having to wade through the crap and "edit" it myself? Not to mention the in depth coverage of things that are important, but not sexy, and slow moving to boot?
Where is the internet equivalent of NPR? Or PBS/Frontline? Or the NY Times international section. Or the Wall Street Journal business section? So far - its the websites of those respective organizations...
That is true for both the time your paying for and the money you are asked to pay.
A blog dashed off in a few minutes (or hours), will never compare to the in-depth reporting that most newspapers still actually deliver. For that I'm willing to pay (and do).
If newspapers ever died, they would drag all the other mediums that have news down with it... most tv/cable/radio/internet copy I've ever seen is lifted from an old dead tree newspaper.
Not to mention - some of us LIKE real news. You know, stuff that isn't about sports, or celebrities, or the horoscope, or the comics, or crap like that. The only hard news you get out of blog posts are just glorified wire reports - sure I can find out about big events like an earthquake, but where am I going to find out about corruption in China? Or inflation in Zimbabwe? Stuff that is ongoing, slow, and less sexy - that require coverage over years. Cable news gave up stories like that a long time ago - all that's left for that in the US is PBS, NPR, and the big print (NY Times, WSJ, etc).
Interestingly - I have noticed that some print media is doing well (at least round me), the hyper-local weeklies that cover individual towns and villages in my area (as opposed to the area at large). Another area completely un-served by the web.
Is this for the MS one or the Red Light one?
Since everyone is discussing MS in THAT topic...
No... the real most important question is if it comes in Cornflower Blue.
Yeah - what is MS thinking, trying to sell to hundreds of millions of customers, when they could go after a market of a few hundred thousand.
Half those exec's are probably dead broke, washed away by the market crash at the end of the new gilded age. If they aren't now, they will be in a year or two, when the commercial real estate collapses like the residential one, all the ARM's start resetting, and the stock market bubble pops again.
We may have new royalty, but the now constant churn means that the Wheel of Life from the dark ages is ever more apt. They won't be up top for long...we all get whats coming to us...eventually.