"On 10 December, the Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed that a Bulava missile test had failed. According to a spokesman, "The missile's first two stages worked as normal, but there was a technical malfunction at the next, third, stage of the trajectory." Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer stated to AFP that "such lights and clouds appear from time to time when a missile fails in the upper layers of the atmosphere and have been reported before ... At least this failed test made some nice fireworks for the Norwegians." Prior to the Russian statement, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had already suggested that the unusual light display occurred when the missile's third stage nozzle was damaged, causing the exhaust to come out sideways and sending the missile into a spin."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Norwegian_spiral_anomaly#Official_Russian_explanation
11 Comments
eric3579says...*promote
siftbotsays...Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, August 31st, 2012 9:25pm PDT - promote requested by eric3579.
AeroMechanicalsays...Happens all the time to my poor Kerbals.
gwiz665says...I'm reminded of the Spiral Obsession http://read.mangashare.com/Uzumaki/chapter-001/page001.html
chingalerasays...It's beautiful
SevenFingerssays...If I saw that, I'd have been like "OMG, that spiral light thingy created a black hole! Hurry up woman closest to me, let's have sex before we get sucked in and die!"
kulpimssays...*promote rational explanations
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newtboysays...*backup=[...snipped...]
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