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Giant sky spiral shocks Norwegians
Published: 09 December, 2009, 20:41
Edited: 29 August, 2010, 02:43
TAGS: Thrills&Spills, Europe
A mysterious spiral-shaped phenomenon in the skies above northern Norway was spotted on Wednesday morning.
The marvelous sight could be seen near the city of Tromsø.
Eyewitnesses describe it as if a shooting star were spinning around and around and spreading outwards with a bluish jet protruding to the side.
The sky spectacle lasted for about two minutes.
Locals of the northern region, who are accustomed to the aurora borealis, say they have never seen anything like it before.
Military analysts in Oslo suggested it was a failed Russian missile launch. Indeed, a test of Russia’s new intercontinental missile took place in the White Sea that day, but Russia’s Defense Ministry has not linked the two incidents.
“On Wednesday, a Bulava ballistic missile was test-fired from a nuclear submarine in the White Sea. The telemetry showed everything went well in the first two stages of the flight,” Aleksey Kuznetsov, chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s press service told RT. “However, an engine problem developed in the third stage. An inquiry has begun into the cause of the fault. Previous test flights have had problems with the first stage of the missile.”
Click for a big picture.
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1 comment
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A spiral would be rather easy to explain. One of the US's ABM weapons is a laser mounted in a 747, the so called airborne laser or ABL. The Soviets tested a similar set up on an Il-76 transport in the 1980s. A Laser is effective because it concentrates energy on one point of the skin of the target which eventually causes the surface to rupture and explode. A simple method to make such a laser less effective is to simply spin the rocket in flight and the easiest way to do that is to direct the exhaust gasses off centre and cause a spiral of thrust gases out the back. This will cause the rocket to spin and make targeting a single point on the rocket impossible. There is a minor loss of range and speed but it actually aides in stabilising the rocket so fins are not needed which can reduce weight and drag. A rocket heading down range away from Norway would appear to create a spiral in the sky as the sun shines through the burnt fuel. A failed rocket would quickly breakup simply due to the g forces involved and the fact that a rocket is a very fragile thing that is not designed to take bending forces of any kind.
a few years back i was walking home from a friends house with a few mates, when i noticed a wierd spinning pattern of lights in the sky that formed an oval ring. which moved accross the sky from left to right , at first nobody else could see it, i felt a bit loopy, but then thankfully everyone began to see it...it looked like a ufo or some secret government experiment or something, totally bizzarre. turns out it was a night clubs' light show. haha.