The Bemidji Mystery Object - What flew over and what made the big bang?
Even NASA investigators are at a loss figuring out what flew over Minnesota recently. The clues just don't add up!
On November 13th, at 6:41 pm, something happened in the sky over Bemidji that defies explanation. Here's what we do know so far:
The weather was clear, air temperature 40 degrees Fahrenheit, with a light breeze of 9 miles per hour. The sun was already down in Minnesota. Suddenly, a bright flash in the sky cast steep shadows onto the ground beneath a parked vehicle, as recorded by a security camera in Nymore, Minnesota. A sudden loud explosion followed 2.95 seconds later, shaking houses and setting off car alarms. The light flash, and the boom, were both intense, but very short lived.
The local sheriff's department reported that a lot of calls immediately started coming in, reporting the flash and explosion from locations along an 80 mile long stretch from near Bagley to Grand Rapids.
An amazing video from runway 31 at the Bemidji airport, located about 4 miles from Nymore, showed an object traveling horizontally at high speed at the same time as the flash and boom were reported.
Was it a Meteor?
It could have been a meteor, but there are some serious problems with that hypothesis. Meteors typically explode as they enter the upper atmosphere. Sound travels at about 1100 feet per second, so it takes a matter of minutes for the sound of these explosions to reach observers on the ground. The flash and boom in Nymore were separated by 2.95 seconds, so the flash occurred roughly half a mile above the camera. According to Professor Emeritus Calvin Alexander, with over 50 years studying such things, this timing rules out a meteor event.
Was it a Homemade Fireworks Experiment?
The flash and boom in the Nymore video did, in some ways, resemble a rather large aerial fireworks explosion. Large fireworks are typically launched up to about 1200 feet above the ground, perhaps a little higher in special cases. However, the Nymore flash with its steep shadow angles and the delayed timing of the boom indicate an altitude well over twice as high above the earth.
The second problem with the fireworks theory is that reports came in along an 80-mile track. Fireworks can be heard up to a few miles away, if you listen carefully, but this doesn't fit the reported experiences of the witnesses separated several dozens of miles apart in Minnesota.
Lightning Perhaps?
The sky was clear all day on November 13th, with no indication of any weather phenomenon that could support the possibility of lightning.
How about that Runway 31 Object?
The Bemidji Airport video was very interesting. The timestamp in the upper left corner shows that an apparently very fast-moving object was caught on this camera at the same time as the flash and boom in Nymore, several miles away.
Runway 31 lies at an angle of 314 degrees. The frame-by-frame analysis of the number of pixels the object traversed clearly demonstrates the object to be coming towards the camera at a steep angle, which all works out to a roughly north-south trajectory. The ground path of the flash-boom event was more along an east-west trajectory. This isn't enough to rule out a correlation between the two videos, but there are some other issues to consider.
Where Did it Go?
The runway 31 object disappeared as it flew behind a pole in the foreground. Careful analysis of the original footage shows that the video wasn't clipped, as the periodically flashing lights near the airport and the timestamp progression were all smooth and continuous. But the object never reappeared to the left of the pole. The best explanation for this is that the object was a bug, and that it landed on the pole.
This object was either a bug at a few meters from the camera, flying at a reasonable bug-like velocity, or if it was a larger object above the runway or at an even further distance, its velocity was extreme.
It's worth noting that even though the Minnesota air temperature at the time was 40F, moths and other bugs were known to be out and about, showing up in other parts of the airport videos.
Whatever the runway 31 object was, meteors don't fly horizontal to the ground, especially at low altitude, and there was no flash associated with this object in this video. All of these details tend to rule this video out as supporting the flash and boom reported elsewhere.
So What was the Flash-Boom?
The authorities have pretty well ruled out a meteor, lightning, or fireworks, and the airport video was likely just a bug. Where does that leave us? With a definite mystery! Perhaps it was a hypersonic domestic or foreign reconnaisance aircraft, or an extraterrestrial craft with operational characteristics we can only imagine. If any further evidence or research results show up I'll report it here, but until then we can only speculate and theorize, without drawing any absolute conclusions. Most importantly, we need to keep an open mind to all possibilities, no matter how bizarre they may be!