What the Heck Was That?
A Close Encounter of the Disastrous Kind

by Gar Johnson
March 14, 1999

Amateur astronomers, rural insomniacs and telescopes all over the world saw something strange on March 10. As the IASA divulges more details about the events surrounding the loss of Farscape One, it becomes clear that strange lights in the sky may have been involved.

No, not space aliens. IASA is describing the phenomenon as a radiation wave, above, captured in a color-corrected photograph from ground telescopes. What caused this wave remains, distressingly, to be determined. Just a few of the possibilities are:

• Recent solar flares, which have been interfering with telecommunications worldwide. IASA seems inclined to accept this theory, and Farscape One was ordered to abort, perhaps too late, on the basis of reported solar flare activity. But can the snow on your television kill an astronaut and destroy his module?

• Loose gases or dust from an orbiting body like a comet. "There are all sorts of gases out there," said Michael Hess, professor of physics at the University of Maryland. "The particles may interact, or become excited by solar radiation, and react in ways we can't necessarily predict." But the most likely culprit, Hale-Bopp, the most recent comet to come close to Earth, did not travel close enough to Earth orbit to leave a measureable amount of detritus. "You would certainly need a large cloud of material to see anything spectacular," said Dr. Hess. "And gases don't stay around long, in a vaccuum."

• Skeptics suggest the phenomenon was merely an optical illusion: perhaps a strike of lightning in the upper atmosphere, reflected by a layer of the ionosphere to look like it is in space. Those who espouse this theory do not relate it to the concurrent IASA disaster and presumed death of an astronaut.

Everybody's got a theory. One local street-preacher in Orlando, FL, who has been proclaiming the end of the world for years, has recently begun to claim that God literally stepped in to end "the insult to His name" that is experimentation in long-range space travel.

Others speculate the image may be a sign of an exotic astronomical body: dark matter, or a fold in the space-time continuum. "Everyone involved in spectral astronomy this week is going ape," said Kelly Sherman, of the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. "The possibility exists that we witnessed a phenomenon that till now we could only theorize about." The level heads of IASA and its governing body, however, may see things differently. When asked about some of the more out-there theories of what happened, Tyrone Marchioni, the IASA mission commander, snapped, "This isn't Star Trek." Dr. Sherman, and others like her, will need substantial proof to change minds in the science community.

Proof, alas, may not be forthcoming. The curious blue light disappeared along with Farscape One, into the ether.