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In 1952, an incredible sight over the skies of Washington, D.C.,

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sends shockwaves across the nation.

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This is the Cold War.

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If you saw a UFO in the sky, a lot of people feared it was the Russians.

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In Norway, eyewitnesses capture breathtaking images of a spectacular spiral in the sky.

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I thought that this was something unnatural.

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What the heck is that?

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Is it aliens?

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Is it coming for us?

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And that Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a mysterious object in Veid's restricted airspace.

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Is this a flight just got by C-17?

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They just wanted this to go away.

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They didn't want to be identified as the UFO airline.

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Does anyone know what these phenomena are?

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And do our governments know more than they ever reveal to us?

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The answers may lie in the fascinating stories of UFO conspiracies.

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Washington, D.C.

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July 19, 1952

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11.40 p.m.

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At National Airport, air traffic controller Edward Nugent can't believe his eyes

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as seven unidentified blips materialize on his radar screen.

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In the closely guarded airspace of Washington, D.C., this is his worst nightmare.

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Suspecting a malfunction with his equipment, he calls over his supervisor, Harry Barnes.

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But he confirms the radar is functioning normally.

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The two men are baffled.

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There are no aircraft on Earth capable of the speeds they are traveling.

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On the opposite side of the airport, radar operator Howard Coughlin also registers the ominous objects.

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Unlike his fellow air traffic controllers, he sees the objects with his own eyes.

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He immediately radios his superior to inform him of the developing situation.

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Barnes, now frantic, raises the alarm at Andrews Air Force Base nine miles from the airport.

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Could the nation's capital, home to nearly a million people and the world's most powerful man, be under threat?

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Medical sociologist Dr. Robert Bartholomew believes the political situation at the time increases the concern.

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There were a number of sightings that were documented during the late 40s and early 50s

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of people actually reporting that they could see on the side of saucers a hammer and sickle insignia.

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In the early 1950s, Soviet development of nuclear technology drives a deadly arms race.

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As the Red Empire expands into Eastern Europe, so does fear of communism.

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A lot of people don't realize that the FBI routinely interviewed flying saucer witnesses

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because there was a common belief that they may have been Russian agents

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and they were actually dispensing disinformation to try to cause mass panic in the United States.

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So these strange lights immediately make the Air Force go on the offensive.

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Two F-94s scramble to intercept.

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The Starfire Jets flying at 600 miles per hour are seconds away when their targets inexplicably vanish.

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Nick Pope, former head of the UFO project at the British Ministry of Defense, has been fascinated by this case for decades.

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To some people, it was almost as if a bizarre game of cat and mouse was playing itself out in the skies of Washington, D.C.

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The following week, the story hits the headlines and in the days that follow, the Air Force is bombarded with hundreds of reports.

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The Air Force is well prepared for such calls. Since 1947, it has actively investigated around 2,000 unexplained sightings.

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Many are recorded by Project Blue Book, headed up by Captain Edward Ruppelt, one of the first men to popularize the term UFO.

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In the wake of the D.C. sightings, he consults radar expert Captain Roy James.

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The sighting is initially dismissed as a trick of the weather. But just one week later, on July 26th, the lights are back.

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Again, fighter jets engage in a high-speed pursuit.

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But the bewildered pilots have never met an adversary like this before.

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Their supersonic jets don't even get close.

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How can these mysterious lights, for two weekends in a row, operate with seeming impunity over the skies of Washington, D.C.?

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For President Truman, enough is enough.

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President Truman personally telephoned to ask what was going on.

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This was almost without precedent. Ruppelt must have been shaking in his boots.

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According to press reports, orders are issued to shoot down UFOs that refuse to land.

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Mounting public pressure makes the Air Force call its biggest press conference since World War II.

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It's been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze to the best of our ability anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace to the United States.

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The Air Force's best suggestion is that the lights are explained by a meteorological oddity called a temperature inversion.

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Atmospheric scientist and storm chaser Dr. Karen Kuseba explains how it works.

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Temperature inversions happen usually when there's a layer of very cold, dense air near the surface and a layer than a warm air overlaying that.

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So what you get then is a temperature profile that increases with height, which means that objects look higher up than they normally would because of the way the light bends as it travels through the inversion.

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This means innocuous objects or lights moving along the ground can seem to be projected high up in the sky.

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In terms of light that gets refracted that looks like big balls, I mean some of it just could be city lights in the way that it's traveling through these different inversions.

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It might make things look either flared or that it has some movement associated with it.

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This might explain the visual sightings, but what about the positive radar readings?

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Chris Moorshead is a former radar engineer with the British Royal Navy.

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Primary radar operates on a principle of echolocation.

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What we do is we transmit pulses of radio energy out into the ether and then we collect any echoes that come back which have bounced off any targets aircraft.

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Anything that the radar illuminates.

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In the same way an inversion acts like a prism, bending light, it can also bend radio waves and trick radar into registering targets that are actually in different locations.

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Temperature inversions and things like that can actually spoof a radar which can lead to factors which cause a response when in fact there's nothing physical out there.

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Retired Air Force pilot and astronomer James McGehee goes one step further.

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We have to understand that the radar operators in Washington have very bad radar and they didn't have all kinds of sophisticated filtering devices today.

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So it would pick up all kinds of various objects.

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The Air Force Verdict, a combination of weather conditions and inadequate equipment are the cause of both the visual and radar sightings.

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But some still believe the incursion into American airspace may come from an entirely different source.

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Can we protect ourselves against the Soviets and if it's not the Soviets, who or what is it?

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In 1952 a series of strange lights converge over Washington DC.

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The media jumps on the story. The worried public want answers.

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We have been able adequately to explain.

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The government quickly puts forward a rational explanation, but for Nick Pope there is something else fueling the nation's anxiety.

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The public were getting mixed messages because of the media coverage.

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Wild stories were doing the rounds about these UFO sightings.

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Might something otherworldly hold the key to understanding the mystery?

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Members of the public were obsessed with the whole flying saucer issue.

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The sci-fi movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still had really put in people's mind the possibility that we might meet visitors from another world.

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We speak every language.

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Can't expect me to believe that. I'm getting out of here.

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Day where you are.

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In the early 1950s television and cinema saw a record release of science fiction titles, while comic book sales peaked with a circulation of over a billion.

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In popular culture the threat of alien invasion reflected the menace of communism.

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It's important not to just look at a sighting per se, but the context in the history of the sighting. That's very important.

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Against this setting the authorities were quick to subdue wild stories of alien visitors circulating in the nation's press.

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Equally, if these sightings are simply a Russian ploy to stoke chaos and fear, the US government must do all they can to shut the rumors down.

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All this worry and panic played itself out in the media in a way which really hadn't happened before.

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The public were fascinated by this, but they were also rather disturbed by it.

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The Air Force stand by their initial conclusion.

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For many people this official explanation is enough and the nation quickly breathes a sigh of relief.

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But for the confused eyewitnesses, questions remain.

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In time some of the original air traffic controllers and military who had actually seen the UFOs came to disbelieve the government's own explanation on this.

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So what was really in the skies over Washington those two weekends in July 1952?

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What I think probably happened is you have a lot of overactive imaginations, people telling tall tales and stories about it, and it sort of got blown up very quickly.

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I think this is a complex case which likely has multiple explanations.

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The temperature inversion and the false radar returns is certainly part of the story.

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But in amongst all of that, I think there may still be one or two sightings that remain to this day unexplained.

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It's 11.55 am. At Shoah Military Garrison, 75 miles south of Thromso, 29-year-old Army officer Christopher Roccoci is driving to his offices just outside the base.

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It was the start of the winter. It was dark in the mornings and the sun was hardly ever up.

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Suddenly he's distracted by a breathtaking light circling high above him.

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I saw the spiral up in the sky, dead straight ahead of the road, so it was a good place to stop.

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But immediately when I pulled my car over, I got out and pulled up my camera.

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I thought about taking a picture, but it was too big to take a picture of.

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I looked too amazing, so I had to film it.

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I thought about when other people film amazing things, they zoom in on it and ruin the whole thing.

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So I actually started zooming in and I thought, oh no, no, no, no, don't do it, don't do it, and I zoom back out.

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He captures these incredible images.

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When I first saw it, I just thought, what the heck is that?

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And I thought briefly, oh, is it aliens?

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It's coming for us, it is staying put, and after a few seconds you can see that it was staying put and just growing in size, sort of.

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Christopher is captivated by the bizarre yet beautiful spectacle.

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It lasted about a minute or so, swirling around, and it ended just turning itself off into a black hole that just started in the middle

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and expanded out until it was just gone.

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I called my security officer off the camp because I wanted to know if I didn't film anything that we shouldn't film.

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But the security officer knows nothing.

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I've never in my life seen anything that strange and unexplainable.

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The size of it and everything that I've been inspired with was the most amazing thing I've seen.

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Christopher isn't the only one to witness the astonishing light display.

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Chaplain Tor Stranda has been serving Tromsø for over 30 years.

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I remember it was early in the morning, I just had my breakfast.

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This was in a dark period, and I went to the window with a cup of coffee, and I looked out and I saw some strange light behind the mountains.

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In the beginning it was very small.

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First I saw just a strange light.

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I thought it was a kind of star or something like that, and it grows, so I knew it came from far behind the mountains.

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So I took my camera and went out on the balcony, and this light became more special.

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It went like a circle.

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It was way wide, but when it dissolved it, it went into kind of blue at the edge of this circle.

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Tor is stunned. He's had a complete loss to explain the puzzling light in the sky above Norway.

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I was so occupied with filming, so afterward I started thinking what was this? What have I filmed?

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I knew that I had filmed something strange, but I didn't realize what it was.

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I know that one day my lord will return, but not in that way.

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On the other side of town, at the offices of NRK, the Norwegian national broadcaster, one reporter's day is about to take an unexpected turn.

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My boss said, you are going out. There is a strange light.

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And I didn't understand a strange light. I hadn't heard about the light.

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The newsroom descends into chaos as reports come flooding in.

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The phone rang and people were trying to get in contact with us.

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My boss was stressed and told me to get in the car and try to find out what this is.

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People were scared because we had never seen something like that before.

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Head of news Nina Einem knows this will be a busy day.

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When we got the videos from the more rural areas, we saw that this was something we had never seen before.

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It was like, wow, we had to try and find out what this was.

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But we understood that this was going to be the story of this day.

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As a public broadcaster serving the 70,000 people of Tromsø, she feels the full burden of responsibility on her shoulders.

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For some reason when something strange happened, people tend to believe that we have all the answers.

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But we had only questions at that time.

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December 2009. An incredible light is spotted in the sky over Norway.

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In the media frenzy that follows, the story attracts a worldwide audience.

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The best meteorological experts can come up with is a bizarre and rare weather phenomenon.

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There is precedent. In October of the same year, this footage is filmed in the skies over Moscow.

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Eyewitnesses are convinced they are seeing something otherworldly.

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Even suggesting a gateway to another dimension has been ripped open.

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Could a unique weather event really explain the spectacle of the Norway spiral?

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Professor Randy Servenny is an atmospheric scientist at Arizona State University.

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He thinks he might have the answer.

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The Norway spiral gives maybe the impression that the Norway spiral is a very different kind of spiral.

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Maybe the impression that something was dropping through a cloud layer.

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And that brings to mind something that's called a hole punch cloud.

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The idea that an object can trigger the water in a cloud to suddenly condense out.

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Clouds are a mass of super-cooled water droplets.

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It's thought these incredible displays are triggered by passing aircraft.

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Propellers and wings can rapidly lower the temperature of the cloud formation they're flying through.

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This quickly transforms the super-cooled water droplets to ice,

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starting a chain reaction which expands out to form a giant hole.

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This might explain the Moscow sighting, but can it also account for what's seen in Norway?

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Typically, this cloud phenomenon occurs at an average of 20,000 feet,

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and it's this fact alone that punches the biggest hole in the weather theory.

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From the video evidence, it's clear Tor Stranda and Christopher filmed the same incredible event.

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But their sightings are over 75 miles apart.

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These type of clouds aren't high enough in the sky to be seen across such a wide area.

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This makes it impossible for two people so far away from each other to witness the same incident.

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The source of the spiral has to be from much higher in the atmosphere.

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Could it really be a visitor from another world?

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Many people wanted to show us their photos, but not so many wanted to talk about it.

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We were afraid of not being believed.

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People want an explanation, a natural explanation, so that they cannot be so afraid.

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With a lack of credible leads, attention turns to the ISCAT Atmospheric Research Facility, 18 miles southeast of Tromsø.

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They use high-tech radar equipment to uncover the secrets of Earth's protective shield.

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Dr. Michael Rietveld is the man in charge.

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We'd got several phone calls from people asking if we knew what the event was.

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Here, they study the effects of climate change in the ionosphere, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

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A zone that stretches to over 300 miles high will be on the edge of space.

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They know that we can actually produce some optical effects in the upper atmosphere using our heating facility.

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So maybe they thought it was something related to that.

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One of the experiments they run, codenamed tequila sunrise, uses high-powered radar to superheat air molecules.

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It's capable of generating some dramatic results.

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Well, the heating experiment transmits a powerful shortwave up into the sky.

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The electrons we energize can excite molecules of the atmosphere and produce light in a limited area.

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And we use it to try and study the mechanism of how the electrons get accelerated.

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It seems ISCAT have the power to produce some weird and wonderful cosmic displays.

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Is this the source of the hypnotic spiral?

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Michael understands why the people of Norway, desperate for answers, turn their attention on his team.

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The optical effects we produce with heating are in the same high range as a spiral.

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But he also knows that the curious light can't possibly have anything to do with his facility.

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Well, the heating experiment produces light that actually normally you can't see with the eye. It's very faint.

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I knew it wasn't heating because we were not running that week. We were planning to run the following week.

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Michael, now fascinated, offers his own idea as to the origin of the mystifying light.

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We knew there was a meteor shower taking place about this time, so I thought maybe it was some unusual spectacular meteor.

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Each year, up to 80,000 tons of these cosmic missiles bombard the Earth,

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and they are certainly capable of producing energetic light shows.

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Stargazer and expert of the cosmos, Professor Carolyn Crawford, explains more.

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A meteor is simply a fragment of space rock, and as it falls through the atmosphere,

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it's going to rub against the molecules of air, it's going to heat up,

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and that'll start to cause the space rock itself to glow and create a kind of streak that follows after the space rock as it falls through the air.

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It's a solid theory, but there is a major problem.

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The key thing about seeing a shooting star and meteor streak through the sky is it produces a long straight streak.

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Even with different issues of perspective, it's very difficult to see how that could ever be viewed as a spiral.

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So what else could this powerful glowing light be?

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Theories were coming in thick and fast.

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Of course, the northern lights are visible from Norway, so people said, well, isn't this the northern lights?

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Dr. Paul Brekka is a solar physicist and senior advisor at the Norwegian Space Center.

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Well, I just love the northern lights, and I've been working on the Sun-Earth connection,

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how the Sun affects us, how it's producing space weather and how it can change climate,

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and also how it produces northern lights.

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It's not long before his phone starts ringing as well, and he gets drawn into the deepening mystery.

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Some journalists called, they said they had received some strange images from lots of people in North Norway,

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and they wondered if we could comment on these pictures.

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The Aurora Borealis is one of the most magnificent sites on Earth.

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These dazzling exhibitions occur when charged solar particles from the Sun slam into gas molecules in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

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Here, some are diverted down towards the Earth's magnetic poles, where they create spectacular displays that glow in the sky.

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The spiral shape was at the same altitude as the northern lights, so in that respect,

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it's okay to think maybe it was some northern lights or some phenomena within space.

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The evidence looks strong, and Paul feels compelled to delve deeper into the case.

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Here's some very nice pictures of the northern lights.

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Well, I can understand that people, maybe, took it for being a northern light.

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So this is a very typical picture of the northern lights. You can see a very nice arc, a curtain-like,

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very often purple in the lower part.

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On closer inspection, he uncovers a problem.

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Sometimes the northern lights also do a curly spin like this. It belongs to a much bigger structure.

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It's not the perfect spiral, and this one is very perfect, and the color is also very wrong compared to what we see in the northern lights.

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But that's not all.

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Further analysis reveals that solar activity is low on the morning in question.

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To create anything close to something that could be mistaken for a glowing spiral,

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the solar winds would need to be far stronger.

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So if it's not weird weather, 3,000-degree lumps of speeding space rock, or the magnificent northern lights,

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what is it?

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With the world's most powerful man on his way to the country, the frantic search for answers continues.

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In the hunt for the source of the stunning Norway spiral, the NRK newsroom chased down every lead.

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It's not long before their attention turns to the military.

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We called the Norwegian defence. If anyone knows what this is, it's probably the defence.

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They didn't want to speculate. They didn't want to say what they knew.

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Nina Einem suspects a conspiracy, but she has no proof.

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This is one of the most heavy surveillance areas in the world.

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We have Russia on our step. We are NATO allies.

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And the American defence have built and paid for big radar systems in northern Norway.

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Around the same time in 2009, President Barack Obama is awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

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Is there some connection between this visit and the dazzling Norway spiral?

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The fact that President Obama was visiting had focused the eyes of the world on Norway.

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What better setting to maybe display your new technology, your new capability?

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Maybe if either the Americans or the Russians possessed some sort of new weapon, they'd want to display it as a show of force.

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For Dr Paul Preck, this is nothing more than a time-wasting dead-end for the investigation.

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It was a big fuss about Obama, and of course it's not often the American President comes to Oslo.

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There's always people trying to draw connection between all kind of stuff, and I think it was just a coincidence that happened this day.

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Certain that visit is unconnected, he makes it his mission to uncover the truth.

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He sets about analyzing the photos and videos of the spectacular spiral that are now flooding the web.

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When I saw the still pictures, it was a little bit hard to explain.

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But when I saw the video that was also put online, it was quite clear it must be a rocket that was going wrong.

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Rocket misfires are nothing new.

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From the dawn of their invention, they have failed in all manner of remarkable ways.

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So how can a misfiring rocket possibly create such an improbable effect?

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This rocket consists basically of three stages, three engines, but each of the engines always have what we call a nozzle, a rocket nozzle,

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which is basically used to propel the gases out on the back and have to be perfectly aligned so it goes in a straight position.

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If this nozzle breaks off or gets damaged for some reason, the fumes will go out to one side

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and that will start pushing the bottom of the rocket to the side while it's moving up in the atmosphere

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and making this spiral shape and the rocket fume will then spray out just like the sprinklers in your garden hose.

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And that's what makes that very strange pattern in the sky.

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This still doesn't account for the concentric pattern. Why are the circles so perfectly formed?

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The key could be that the astonishing event takes place extraordinarily high in the atmosphere.

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In the vacuum of space, a misfiring rocket would behave very differently to how it would on Earth.

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At high altitude, the air is deadly still and the weaker gravitational pull means an out-of-control rocket is able to rotate freely once set in motion.

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At this extreme height, there is no wind, so any fumes or fuel being pumped out linger for longer before dispersing.

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A malfunctioning missile is now the prime suspect.

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Paul is convinced the military are involved, but he needs proof.

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The situation was not helped by the fact that inherently when you're dealing with rocket tests, military authorities tend to be quite secretive

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and not everyone was telling the same story, not everyone was telling the full story.

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To discover the secretive source, it's crucial to figure out where exactly this light originates.

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We have a rocket range in North Norway. It is also a rocket range in North Sweden.

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From those pictures taken in direction they were taking off, it couldn't be in those two rocket ranges because they were directed towards east.

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Based on the trajectory of the strange object and the positions of the sightings, he's able to narrow the search.

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He's left with only one possibility.

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The only place then is Russia, and most probably then from the White Sea.

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The White Sea, around 350 miles from Norway's border, is a hotbed of Russian naval activity.

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Now suspecting Norway's eastern neighbor, Paul hunts for the final piece of the jigsaw.

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He trolls the internet looking for clues.

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At last, he stumbles upon a communication intercepted by an amateur radio website.

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It's the breakthrough he needs.

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We found the answer, I think, when we found this message.

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And it contained lots of information that basically told us this must be a missile.

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It says it will be a warning in the White Sea, a rocket launch in the same time frame, 9th of December, from 2 to 9am.

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Exactly the same time we saw the event.

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So it was clearly a message sent out from the Russian government that you're not allowed to move into this area because of testing of missiles.

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Satisfied a high altitude rocket failure is the culprit. Paul feels ready to break the story to Norwegian media.

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We think it might be a rocket which was sent up from possibly a boat or submarine in the far north.

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In the days that follow, the wild speculation forces the hand of the Russian military, and they release a statement.

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Although they don't directly confess that a failed rocket is the source of the light, they do admit to testing submarine-launched intercontinental missiles in the White Sea.

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On the second day, they could confirm that there had been a Russian rocket, and there was no doubt about it.

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It seems likely a malfunctioning missile is the cause. Case closed.

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Even then, despite the weight of evidence, not everyone is sure the mystery can be so easily explained away.

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It was a bizarre pattern. Still lots of people I think are not convinced it was a rocket missile.

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I think people try to connect it to something out of this world, UFO and so on.

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Still people are arguing this on the internet. It cannot be this missile. It has to be something else.

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Some aliens coming in and trying to warp itself through the atmosphere.

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Chicago O'Hare International Airport. November 7th, 2006.

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This is one of the busiest airports in the world, handling over 2,000 flights a day.

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Controlling this much traffic means nothing gets in or out without being seen.

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Until today.

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At 4.15pm, the United Airlines ramp worker is making final checks on flight number 446 to North Carolina, when he's confronted by an astonishing sight.

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Just below the thick grey low-lying cloud, a mysterious object silently hovers.

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Anything unusual in the air is a serious threat to passenger safety.

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He wastes no time contacting the pilot and first officer on board the waiting 737.

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The aircrew are perplexed, as they too bear witness to the incredible sight.

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Chicago Tribune reporter John Hilcovitch is the man to first break the story.

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The radio waves were just burning up at O'Hare on the United Frequency because so many people were listening in as part of their job.

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They have to be tuned in. So there was some banter back and forth that maybe somebody was playing a joke.

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What you're about to hear are actual recordings from the day.

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We're at the airport.

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Hey David, this is from the United Tower.

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Hey, did you see a flying disc out by C-17?

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Oh, the name is Star-Essue.

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Oh, it's a big disc.

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Why are you seeing flying discs?

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Well, they get the pilot and the rampers are telling us that C-17 is also flying discs above and we can't see it.

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Come on, Sue. I imagine anything so.

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And if I do, I wouldn't bet to it.

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Overhearing the radio chatter, United employees rush out onto the tarmac.

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For several minutes, pilots, mechanics, ramp workers and United Airlines supervisors at Gate C-17 stand in stare and wonder at what's hovering above them.

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All these individuals had the same message to a point of what they saw, this gray disc-shaped object.

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There were no lights on this aircraft.

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Some said it wasn't spinning at all. It was just stationary in the sky. Others said they perceived that it was spinning.

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All agreed it was making no noise.

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Air traffic controllers can find nothing unusual on radar. Then something extraordinary happens.

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This object then just burst through the cloud layer with great velocity in a matter of a fraction of a second, they said.

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And it had such energy that it created this donut-shaped hole in an otherwise very cloud-filled sky.

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How could this object ever be so much more than a single object?

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Could this object, estimated to be between 6 and 20 feet in diameter, infiltrate the closely guarded skies above O'Hare International Airport?

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What on this Earth could possibly blast a hole through thousands of feet of dense cloud?

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Incredibly, it will be two months before news of this incident hits the headlines.

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One of the first tips I received on this was from the National UFO Reporting Center.

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Its director, Peter Davenport, led me to a source who led me to one observer, the United Airlines.

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In the investigation that follows, John uncover some major discrepancies between the eyewitness accounts on the ground and the official claims of the airline and the government.

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He tracks down eyewitness after eyewitness willing to talk, all who claim they report the incident to their bosses.

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In total, 12 people come forward.

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What sparked my interest and the interest of my editors was that I obviously immediately called United Airlines in FAA,

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and their response was they knew nothing about this incident.

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Both said that my call to them was the first they heard of this.

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Suspecting a cover-up, he files a Freedom of Information request and makes a startling discovery.

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Both United Airlines as well as the FAA were keenly aware of receiving reports.

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In fact, United Airlines interviewed employees, had them write reports, had them draw pictures,

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and I have emails back and forth showing that clearly there was concern on the part of United officials.

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The FAA, I think, realized that I wasn't going to go away.

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November 2006, an unidentified object breaches the restricted airspace of O'Hare International Airport.

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Veteran reporter John Hilkovic tracks down 12 eyewitnesses.

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But frustratingly, none of them are willing to go on the record.

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The first officer that I interviewed was going to use his name on the paper.

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I had him on the record, and before publication, he was warned that he should not have gone on the record.

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He has no choice but to conceal their identities.

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On New Year's Day 2007, the story breaks.

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It immediately becomes a worldwide sensation.

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A lot of it had to do with the high caliber of these witnesses.

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I mean, this was not just some farmer on his back 40 saying, I saw something up there.

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These were trained pilots and others who had, you know, just huge experience.

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Can a person's profession really influence their credibility as an eyewitness?

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For medical sociologist Dr. Robert Bartholomew, it's never this cut and dry.

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You could have Barack Obama, Albert Einstein as witnesses,

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and I would place no more credence in the pilot or the other people as I would Joe down the street.

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Because there is no such thing as a trained observer.

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We are all susceptible.

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After Hilkovic files the Freedom of Information request, the FAA changes its position.

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They tell the Tribune that light reflecting off the bottom of clouds is the cause of the uproar.

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In puzzling cases like this, atmospheric scientist Professor Randy Cervenny

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thinks there can be a rational explanation.

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Well, we all know that clouds can actually appear to be white.

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And the reason that clouds appear to be white is that they are actually reflecting all the radiation,

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all the sunlight that they are getting on them.

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With dense cloud cover, sunlight is unable to penetrate the layers all the way down,

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so it appears to be much darker.

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So if there are bright lights on the ground that can actually inadvertently shine up onto the bottom of a cloud

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and the observer doesn't know that, they could mistake those lights on the bottom of the cloud for some other kinds of objects.

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A busy airport is the ideal setting to create such baffling effects.

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But not everyone is convinced this adequately explains the mystery of the O'Hare sighting.

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The National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, or NARCAB for short,

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is a private agency set up so pilots can anonymously report unidentified aerial dangers without fear of reprisal.

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A key member of the team is Don Ledger.

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There were reports that maybe runway lights were the reason behind this particular phenomenon,

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when in fact this happened during the daylight.

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Granted it was late in the season.

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So runway lights, now I don't see that at all.

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However runway lights are going to make this effect anyway of a whole effect,

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where you can see blue sky through it.

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It just doesn't make any sense at all.

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For the NARCAB team, their greatest fear is that something is able to breach the closely monitored area, utterly undetected.

401
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It has to be of real concern.

402
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We've been concerned to anybody on the ground who saw it, that if you don't know what's in your airspace next to you, you get very frightened.

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However, the FAA and United Airlines claim the radar operators record nothing out of the ordinary.

404
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:25,000
For them, this is proof enough that there is no viable threat, and they see no need to investigate further.

405
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:34,000
With today's modern radar, it's near impossible for something solid to slip through the tightly woven net protecting the airport.

406
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Airfields, major airports are very well served by radars.

407
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So to actually have something physical in the vicinity of an airport, which isn't tracked by radar, is extremely unusual.

408
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Retired Air Force pilot James McGayhay backs up this position.

409
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There was no evidence that anything was there that was solid because there was nothing on the radar.

410
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It's almost 100% certain that this is an atmospheric phenomena.

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Narcat produced an exhaustive 155 page report on the incident.

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In the final analysis, their conclusion is disturbing.

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But it came out as a true unknown as far as we were concerned.

414
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:23,000
It was unresolved, but that it was not a weather phenomena.

415
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:29,000
United Airlines have never veered from their assertion that nothing unusual happened.

416
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:34,000
And despite requests, they have never produced an official report on the incident.

417
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:42,000
I received thousands of calls, thousands of emails right after the incident and even continuing to this day.

418
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,000
People do want answers.

419
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:50,000
I think many people have the feeling that there is no conclusion to this story.

420
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,000
The government didn't take it seriously enough.

421
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:56,000
United Airlines really did not want to address this at all.

422
00:42:56,000 --> 00:43:02,000
And so the mystery remains what happened on that November 7 day in 2006.