Forget the foam. The real culprit responsible for the Columbia disaster may be lurking in that mysterious realm of high energy particles buzzing around in the lower reaches of the ionosphere.

"Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned.
...

"NASA officials have stressed the importance of photographic, video or debris evidence from the earliest moments of the shuttle's distress, which sensors indicate began at about 5:53 a.m. above California. That's when sensors in a wheel well blinked out, in the words of NASA investigators, "as if someone cut a wire."

"That is also roughly the time during which the amateur photographer snapped his image of Columbia as it streaked across the sky north of San Francisco. A precise time may be mapped by matching the photo and the strange electrical signature to the crisp background field of stars.

"Physicists have long jokingly referred to the lower reaches of the ionosphere -- which fluctuates in height around 40 miles -- as the "ignorosphere," due to the lack of understanding of this mysterious realm of rarefied air and charged electric particles."

Full Chronicle article

"Wow."

"That was astronaut Tammy Jernigan's stunned reaction last night when she viewed a photo of what appears to be space shuttle Columbia getting zapped by a purplish electrical bolt shortly before it disintegrated Saturday morning."

Full WorldNet Daily article on Rense.com

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While the validity of these images must be verified, it seems likely to this observer that the intitial problems with the shuttle began just before it passed over the city by the bay.

Kudos to Tom Brosz for the initial heads-up on this story.

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