Galaxy M51, courtesy of NASA

Chronology:

In the predawn hours of December 10th, 2009, in the sky over Norway, a blue light rose. Apparently originating behind a distant mountain range, the light climbed into the dark sky and began to move in a tight circular pattern, generating a luminous spiral image that expanded in only seconds to cover a large portion of the sky.

A greenish blue beam of light then shot out of the center of the spiral, visible in a stable pattern for ten to twelve minutes. Towards the end of this exhibition the central light -- up until then the source of the radiating spiral pattern -- vanished. An expanding circular region of darkness quickly engulfed the huge glowing spiral. The greenish blue spiral beam gradually faded.

Though initially denying that a Russian missile was responsible for the light show, Russian authorities later attributed the cosmic display to the failed test of the Bulava missile, launched from a submarine in the White Sea. According to the later report, the missile failed in the third stage.

In world news reports the mystery was reported solved -- the explanation: a failed Russian missile launch.

Although I had been doing some remote viewing in that same general area of the world I didn't see this happen. In meditation I did try for an impression of the event and immediately concluded it was a laser created image. That answer satisfied me. The official answer that a Russian missile went crazy and eventually exploded didn't seem right. I got angry at the attitude of the Press, that we're supposed to accept a one-line statement as the truth without even asking any skeptical questions. I had plenty of questions.

The spiral we saw is supposed to be unburned fuel vented from the third stage engines of the missile. It's a cloud of combustible vapor. What would a cloud do? Clouds drift. Clouds break up and distort. Look at any contrail and you'll see that. The spiral doesn't fade with distance. The cloud would have to expand to form a widening spiral. The cloud only expands in length, not width. The shape is stable and the lines of the spiral are clean, even though every part of the cloud is in motion, expanding and rotating around the center.

But look back at some of the best photos and you'll see the cloud doing exactly what it ought to do, as a cloud. At the center the spiral actually is tight and defined, becoming amorphous and expansive at the outer edges. That's not what grabs your attention when you see the video. You see what's clearest and most unusual and the rest gets skipped. If you don't look for what makes sense, you don't remember it.

Why is the cloud illuminated? The fuel isn't burning. The cloud spiral supposedly is lit up by the morning sun, already above the horizon when viewed from that high altitude. But the entire formation is lit, including the greenish blue spiral that reaches back to the ground. That second beam or cloud formed after the spiral, appearing to emerge from it. Is that the correct sequence for a vapor trail?

The greenish spiral does have the right shape to be a missile exhaust trail. If the missile has two engines and spirals in flight, that shape is what we should see. This is burned fuel, not fuel vapor, so the color should be different. The illumination is still a puzzle, but the trail could be much higher up than it seems to be. Instead of ending at a relatively nearby mountain range, the trail extends nearly eight hundred miles to the White Sea. We only see the highest portion. The sun's still rising, so the cloud appears first, then the high portion of the vapor trail lights up gradually as sunlight sweeps across it, appearing to shoot a beam back to earth.

Why does the cloud vanish? When the missile stops adding vapor to the formation a rapidly expanding black area overtakes the entire spiral. Is that the fuel burning? If it is, why don't we see a flash as it burns? If it doesn't burn, why don't we continue to see the cloud? Why doesn't the green spiral vanish along with the rest of it?

If this is a cloud moving at high speed through thin and stable cold air, that expanding area of darkness is the space the cloud leaves behind. Nothing's burning, so there's no flash. The vapors move away, randomizing at the outer edges of the spiral, until nothing is left but a hazy amorphous glow. The exhaust trail, hanging at lower altitudes, lasts a little longer.

It looks like a mystery. Almost none of us have seen anything like this before, so we look for the strange parts and interpret what we see in unusual ways. Probably we'll never see anything like this again, because the detail and the definition of this event really are unusual. A unique chain of circumstances produced it. We probably couldn't do this one twice if we tried. But if you sort through the information and look at all of it, the mundane laws of physics shine through. It's still one of the coolest things we'll ever see.

Links:

Mystery Spiral Appears Over Norway
What Was the Norway Spiral?