Maybe everybody is looking in the wrong direction.
It seems that debris falling off the spaceship is a pretty commom event. There are other things that can trigger a Columbia like disaster.
Just after the Columbia disaster, some scientists argued that the Shuttle was struck by a Hyper-Lightning during it's reentry. There are a lot of information about that here:
http://www.superforce.com/shuttle/
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe everybody is looking in the wrong direction. It seems that debris falling off the spaceship is a pretty commom event. There are other things that can trigger a Columbia like disaster.
Just after the Columbia disaster, some scientists argued that the Shuttle was struck by a Hyper-Lightning during it's reentry.
There are a lot of information about that here: http://www.superforce.com/shuttle/