What happened
Before dawn on 9 December 2009, people across northern Norway saw something astonishing: a blue beam of light seemed to rise from behind the mountains, stop in mid-air, and then begin spinning out a vast, glowing white spiral. Within the spiral a dark centre appeared to open, like a portal in a science-fiction film. The display lasted around ten minutes and was visible from all of Northern Norway and Trøndelag, as well as northern Sweden. Hundreds of people called the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard remarked on the enormous area it covered, and photographs and videos flew around the world within hours. It came the day before Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and speculation ranged from a new kind of aurora to a wormhole or an effect of the Large Hadron Collider. A smaller, similar display had been seen in Norway the month before. Russian media dubbed it a UFO show for Obama.
The official explanation
On 10 December the Russian Defence Ministry announced that a test of the RSM-56 Bulava, fired from a submarine in the White Sea, had failed when its third stage malfunctioned. Harvard–Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell had already proposed that a damaged third-stage nozzle sent exhaust sideways and set the missile spinning, spraying fuel into a spiral lit by sunlight at high altitude. Defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer noted that failed Arctic missile tests had produced similar displays before.
The anomalous case
This case is a reminder that some of the most spectacular 'UFOs' are classified military technology seen from an unexpected angle. For hours the spiral had no explanation, it was seen by a huge population, and it resembled nothing in the public catalogue of sky phenomena. Russia did not volunteer the cause; it acknowledged the failed launch only after worldwide publicity, and ABC News reported that the ministry would not directly confirm the link to the light show. A similar display had appeared a month earlier with no announcement. For anyone arguing that governments test secret hardware without telling the public, and that witnesses may be seeing exactly that, Norway 2009 is a documented example, even if the hardware in this case was a missile rather than anything stranger.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- 2009 Norwegian spiral anomaly Wikipedia
- Failed Russian Rocket Suspected in Light Show ABC News
- The Norway Spiral The Planetary Society
Witness reports elsewhere
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