Another explosion was captured on dashcams in the rural skies of Eastern Russia. About 1500 miles from Moscow, in the Sverdlovsk region, a huge bright orange flash hovered above. No one is entirely sure what it was. The Russian government is denying any involvement, but after they lied about the toxicity of the strange noxious cloud in Moscow recently, it’s hard to believe anything they say. Here are some videos and theories from around the web:
According to Inquisitor, it could just have been a case of atmospheric conditions around a meteor, with hydrogen and oxygen burning in the air.
Marco Langbroek of the Dutch Meteor Society doesn’t think it’s caused by a meteor, however:
To me, it looks like a fire or series of small explosions and subsequent large explosion or flash fire reflecting on a cloud deck. [A] Russian article (in Google translation) seems to suggest there is a major chemical plant nearby?
E1.ru thinks a military exercise or explosive disposal could have been behind it, but a military spokesman denies this, saying:
No exercise and training were underway on that day, and no military units are based in the region, so we have nothing to do with it.
Regional emergency services say that no accidents in connection with the event had been reported, nor had any sound of explosion.
Astronomer Phil Plait thinks it could be a bolide, which is a fireball caused by a chunk of debris entering earth’s atmosphere at high speed. However, he finds the color strange, and the shakiness of the videos makes it hard to determine the exact motion of whatever is happening. He’s holding back his judgement for now.
Those all seem like fairly reasonable guesses, but if you want to get even more wild with the speculation, you can join the discussion on Reddit. Or maybe, like this Russian on Twitter, you don’t really give a fuck.
