Now it’s the Aussies. On October 13, 2000, a bizarre display of upper atmosphere pyrotechnics mystified the midwestern U.S. On Tuesday, December 26, a similar event took place over Queensland in Australia. As in the U.S., police were swamped with calls about the strange lights and booming noises in the sky.
There were reports of “explosions in the sky, sonic boom-type noises and flare-type lights.” In the U.S. on October 13, witnesses described the phenomenon in various ways, primarily as a large white light surrounded by five smaller balls of light or as a flaring body breaking up and moving slowly across the sky.
Controversy erupted about the explanation when NASA claimed that it was a Russian Proton rocket breaking up, and U.S. Space Command and NORAD flatly denied this. In the end, the Proton Rocket explanation was accepted when a Kansas farmer found pieces of such a rocket. However, the location of the debris did not agree with the trajectory of the object.
The Australian event was equally baffling, as it apparently continued for over two hours, a time lag hardly consistent with a meteor impact, which would take at most a minute or so.
No debris has as yet been found, and it has been determined that it was not the MIR, which appeared for a few days recently to be in possible danger of an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere.
For the Whitleysworld story about the U.S. incident, click here.
For the full story of the Australian event, click here.
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