6 ms·

Chaff Cloud That Lit Up Radars as It Drifted Across Midwest Remains a Mystery

99 points by molecule 8y ago

mnw21cam 8y ago
"By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:" break EU law and screw us over. No thanks. https://outline.com/36cJVa https://outline.com/36cJVa
- everyone 8y ago
  It seems I need to use Outline to read the majority of articles linked here. Outline is a great site!
  - psychometry 8y ago
    Does it work on paywalled pages like WSJ?
- viggity 8y ago
  Isn't the notification exactly what makes it not break EU Law? Also, "screw us over"?!? Erma gerd, the're gonna show us relevant ads. The end is neigh. The end is neigh. You must be a blast at parties.
  - lightedman 8y ago
    The end is NIGH, horse-boy.
- glenneroo 8y ago
  I went ahead and tried anyways and got this error: > Request has been terminated Possible causes: the network is offline, Origin is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin, the page is being unloaded, etc. For such an AFAIK unknown blog, they really are making it difficult to get new readers.
marktangotango 8y ago
Seems like the same people who search for meteorites could get a general location for where this went off radar and go walk around. Other than actual chaff, my mind goes to possible “black projects” when reading things like this. I can’t think of any possible applications though.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  It looks like once this stuff has dispersed into the air, it is very fine and sparse, so there probably won't be much to see on the ground. Must do wonders for the local wildlife though.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Unless it's laced with some exotic heavy metal it's probably better for the environment than most plastics.
    - mnw21cam 8y ago
      If it's thin aluminium foil, then it'll probably decompose fairly quickly. I'm more concerned about what will try eating it before it does so.
    - jpster 8y ago
      That’s a low bar for comparison.
- vectorEQ 8y ago
  would you settle for a black project researching new radar evasion and confusion techniques? Seems like a legit purpose and something companies and governments will be actively researching. This kind of research would be under nda / top secret or black project just depending on what entity would do it.
- Someone 8y ago
  If you have a few seconds of position information of a meteorite, it’s possible to make a fairly accurate estimate of where it will come down. The effect of wind speed, air pressure and air temperature on the spot of impact is limited. With less dense stuff that moves a lot slower, that’s a lot harder. This stuff may stay in the air for days, rain drops may take it to a lower air layer with different wind direction or down to the ground, etc. This stuff went off radar either because it got dispersed or because it got too low for the radars to see it. In either case, it will be hard to predict where, if anywhere on land, it will come down.
time-domain0 8y ago
If the chaff had maximum surface area-to-weight ratio approaching spiders ballooning, <2.5 um dust particles and dandelion seeds, and there were enough thermals upwelling air in the area, it's entirely possible for chaff to persist as long as there is an average slight updraft gradient to periodically relift material. Granted, it's of limited military value unless it were dumped in large quantities (such as an/several E- prefixed US mil aircraft flying air defense suppression/Wild Weasel) and such upwelling wind conditions were present. It's usually intended to create false echoes to misdirect a missile or break a radar lock in real-time with a starting velocity similar to the original aircraft, and then it has no purpose once it separates far from the launching aircraft.
- chrisweekly 8y ago
  Speaking of dandelion seeds, check out this video showing the vortex involved in their flight(1). I think it's beautiful. https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-018-0604-2/MediaObjects/41586_2018_604_MOESM4_ESM.mp4 https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...
- dylan604 8y ago
  Doesn’t the chaff need to be of certain lengths to match the frequencies of the incoming radar. I thought I read something about that in one of my previous wake cycles
  - madengr 8y ago
    Yes, peak scattering will occur at 1/2 wavelength, and multiples of that.
avoutthere 8y ago
"chaff was released by a military C130 [sic] northwest of Evansville." Not exactly a mystery.
- edkennedy 8y ago
  Uncorroborated seemingly random claim on twitter as stated in the article.
- jonknee 8y ago
  So why was it 50 miles across and in the air for 10 hours? That's not from a C130.
- macintux 8y ago
  Uncorroborated, and also the article notes that the duration of the cloud is unusual.
mannykannot 8y ago
I thought of migrating birds, as they sometimes show up on radar, but there does not appear to be anything here[1] corresponding to this event. [1] http://birdcast.info/live-migration-maps/ http://birdcast.info/live-migration-maps/ Update: I got the date wrong, this would have been Dec 10... Data is missing from 10:40 to 16:10 CT, and the spatial resolution is not high, but the map is showing medium rates of migration in that area at the later time.
mothsonasloth 8y ago
I wonder if they will be able to put AI into missiles to detect Infrared decoys (flares, IR laser) or radar countermeasures (chaff, jamming). Military countermeasures are really cool, if you can get past the whole moral dilemmas in working with technology like that.
- dingaling 8y ago
  There was rudimentary intelligence in missiles such as the BAe ASRAAM back in the late 1990s. For example extrapolating the shape of the target from the IIR image and rejecting objects that were non-geometric, or too small, or too consistently hot.
- madengr 8y ago
  What moral dilemma? There are plenty of people who would kill (pick your group) on the spot. Being armed is good.
  - wedn3sday 8y ago
    This comment is extremely naive. Once you create a weapon, you have no control over how its used by politicians years later. The engineers who made the avionics system for the Predator drones (just as a random example) are somewhat responsible for when those drones are used to bomb wedding parties, even if when they were developing the drone it was only intended for surveillance. Most of the people who would like to kill (pick my group), would like to do so because of careless use of advanced weapons systems by politicians who're only interested in the next election cycle. The politicians could never have bombed those wedding parties, and thus created the people that want to kill my group, if some very smart and morally bankrupt engineers hadnt given them the ability to do so. Being armed is only good if you trust the people who control those arms. I dont know where you live, but the guy in control of my countries military is a narcissistic cheeto with the IQ of a cuncused wombat, whos first week in office involved the authorization of a combat mission that resulted in more then 20 dead non-combatants [0], including a 4 year old child. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-trump-obama/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-trump-oba...
brootstrap 8y ago
Interesting. I was looking at radar with my co-worker yesterday, we saw these scans and were like WTF is going on? Chaff from a C-130 huh? They do some interesting stuff with those planes. I worked on a project where we flew C-130 thru clouds, took pictures of the clouds and did data analysis etc. Spent an entire summer analyzing pictures of ice crystals like this [1] in MATLAB. Fun times... [1] https://www.eol.ucar.edu/instruments/two-dimensional-optical-array-cloud-probe https://www.eol.ucar.edu/instruments/two-dimensional-optical...
- debt 8y ago
  Might've been "smart" chaff to achieve this same thing. Kinda like that fake tech they used in the movie Twister to map tornados.
aurizon 8y ago
Chaff has always been a short term phenomenon - it settles, so how do you make it neutrally dense or even lighter than air so it will not settle. The key is related to the aluminum coated Mylar balloons - make them as light as air, Helium diffuses out quickly but if you use hydrogen you can create a chaff machine that uses two sheets of plastic, one coated with very thin aluminum. trap helium or hydrogen between them, then laminate and separate them into tiny tubes with neutral density so the residence time in air is quite a few hours with Hydrogen, lots less with helium. You can make it in advance, but popped popcorn fills a plane quickly, but unpopped corn allows you to mobilize more chaff in the plane. This would be a good method to fox radar guided missiles, or radar satellite surveys or launches. These short straws of Mylar would have the needed aerial residence time and could even be made to rise, loiter and then fall with the right choice of gasses (mixed hydrogen and helium allows a rise, followed by a fall as the helium diffuses out) - saves helium as well
- aurizon 8y ago
  both sheets need to be metallized to reduce diffusion across the film.
mcguire 8y ago
"The Red Hills MOA is relatively large, including areas of both Illinois and Indiana. We don't know if the MOA was active at the time the plume appeared on radar, but it might help explain the incident." The military releases "notices to airmen" (NOTAMs?) indicating when a MOA is in use, no?
zrail 8y ago
They issued an update today with quotes from the West Virginia Air National Guard: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west-virginia-air-guard-c-130h-was-responsible-for-massive-chaff-cloud-over-midwest http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west-virginia-a...
FlyMoreRockets 8y ago
You do realize we're in the middle of a fairly intense meteor storm, where lots of sand sized particles are turned to plasma when they hit the atmosphere, right? It was even today's Google Doodle.

99 points by molecule 8y ago

"By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:" break EU law and screw us over. No thanks. https://outline.com/36cJVa https://outline.com/36cJVa

everyone 8y ago
It seems I need to use Outline to read the majority of articles linked here. Outline is a great site!
- psychometry 8y ago
  Does it work on paywalled pages like WSJ?
viggity 8y ago
Isn't the notification exactly what makes it not break EU Law? Also, "screw us over"?!? Erma gerd, the're gonna show us relevant ads. The end is neigh. The end is neigh. You must be a blast at parties.
- lightedman 8y ago
  The end is NIGH, horse-boy.
glenneroo 8y ago
I went ahead and tried anyways and got this error: > Request has been terminated Possible causes: the network is offline, Origin is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin, the page is being unloaded, etc. For such an AFAIK unknown blog, they really are making it difficult to get new readers.

marktangotango 8y ago

Seems like the same people who search for meteorites could get a general location for where this went off radar and go walk around. Other than actual chaff, my mind goes to possible “black projects” when reading things like this. I can’t think of any possible applications though.

mnw21cam 8y ago
It looks like once this stuff has dispersed into the air, it is very fine and sparse, so there probably won't be much to see on the ground. Must do wonders for the local wildlife though.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Unless it's laced with some exotic heavy metal it's probably better for the environment than most plastics.
  - mnw21cam 8y ago
    If it's thin aluminium foil, then it'll probably decompose fairly quickly. I'm more concerned about what will try eating it before it does so.
  - jpster 8y ago
    That’s a low bar for comparison.
vectorEQ 8y ago
would you settle for a black project researching new radar evasion and confusion techniques? Seems like a legit purpose and something companies and governments will be actively researching. This kind of research would be under nda / top secret or black project just depending on what entity would do it.
Someone 8y ago
If you have a few seconds of position information of a meteorite, it’s possible to make a fairly accurate estimate of where it will come down. The effect of wind speed, air pressure and air temperature on the spot of impact is limited. With less dense stuff that moves a lot slower, that’s a lot harder. This stuff may stay in the air for days, rain drops may take it to a lower air layer with different wind direction or down to the ground, etc. This stuff went off radar either because it got dispersed or because it got too low for the radars to see it. In either case, it will be hard to predict where, if anywhere on land, it will come down.

time-domain0 8y ago

If the chaff had maximum surface area-to-weight ratio approaching spiders ballooning, <2.5 um dust particles and dandelion seeds, and there were enough thermals upwelling air in the area, it's entirely possible for chaff to persist as long as there is an average slight updraft gradient to periodically relift material. Granted, it's of limited military value unless it were dumped in large quantities (such as an/several E- prefixed US mil aircraft flying air defense suppression/Wild Weasel) and such upwelling wind conditions were present. It's usually intended to create false echoes to misdirect a missile or break a radar lock in real-time with a starting velocity similar to the original aircraft, and then it has no purpose once it separates far from the launching aircraft.

chrisweekly 8y ago
Speaking of dandelion seeds, check out this video showing the vortex involved in their flight(1). I think it's beautiful. https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-018-0604-2/MediaObjects/41586_2018_604_MOESM4_ESM.mp4 https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...
dylan604 8y ago
Doesn’t the chaff need to be of certain lengths to match the frequencies of the incoming radar. I thought I read something about that in one of my previous wake cycles
- madengr 8y ago
  Yes, peak scattering will occur at 1/2 wavelength, and multiples of that.

avoutthere 8y ago

"chaff was released by a military C130 [sic] northwest of Evansville." Not exactly a mystery.

edkennedy 8y ago
Uncorroborated seemingly random claim on twitter as stated in the article.
jonknee 8y ago
So why was it 50 miles across and in the air for 10 hours? That's not from a C130.
macintux 8y ago
Uncorroborated, and also the article notes that the duration of the cloud is unusual.

mannykannot 8y ago

I thought of migrating birds, as they sometimes show up on radar, but there does not appear to be anything here[1] corresponding to this event. [1] http://birdcast.info/live-migration-maps/ http://birdcast.info/live-migration-maps/ Update: I got the date wrong, this would have been Dec 10... Data is missing from 10:40 to 16:10 CT, and the spatial resolution is not high, but the map is showing medium rates of migration in that area at the later time.

mothsonasloth 8y ago

I wonder if they will be able to put AI into missiles to detect Infrared decoys (flares, IR laser) or radar countermeasures (chaff, jamming). Military countermeasures are really cool, if you can get past the whole moral dilemmas in working with technology like that.

dingaling 8y ago
There was rudimentary intelligence in missiles such as the BAe ASRAAM back in the late 1990s. For example extrapolating the shape of the target from the IIR image and rejecting objects that were non-geometric, or too small, or too consistently hot.
madengr 8y ago
What moral dilemma? There are plenty of people who would kill (pick your group) on the spot. Being armed is good.
- wedn3sday 8y ago
  This comment is extremely naive. Once you create a weapon, you have no control over how its used by politicians years later. The engineers who made the avionics system for the Predator drones (just as a random example) are somewhat responsible for when those drones are used to bomb wedding parties, even if when they were developing the drone it was only intended for surveillance. Most of the people who would like to kill (pick my group), would like to do so because of careless use of advanced weapons systems by politicians who're only interested in the next election cycle. The politicians could never have bombed those wedding parties, and thus created the people that want to kill my group, if some very smart and morally bankrupt engineers hadnt given them the ability to do so. Being armed is only good if you trust the people who control those arms. I dont know where you live, but the guy in control of my countries military is a narcissistic cheeto with the IQ of a cuncused wombat, whos first week in office involved the authorization of a combat mission that resulted in more then 20 dead non-combatants [0], including a 4 year old child. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-trump-obama/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-trump-oba...

brootstrap 8y ago

Interesting. I was looking at radar with my co-worker yesterday, we saw these scans and were like WTF is going on? Chaff from a C-130 huh? They do some interesting stuff with those planes. I worked on a project where we flew C-130 thru clouds, took pictures of the clouds and did data analysis etc. Spent an entire summer analyzing pictures of ice crystals like this [1] in MATLAB. Fun times... [1] https://www.eol.ucar.edu/instruments/two-dimensional-optical-array-cloud-probe https://www.eol.ucar.edu/instruments/two-dimensional-optical...

debt 8y ago
Might've been "smart" chaff to achieve this same thing. Kinda like that fake tech they used in the movie Twister to map tornados.

aurizon 8y ago

Chaff has always been a short term phenomenon - it settles, so how do you make it neutrally dense or even lighter than air so it will not settle. The key is related to the aluminum coated Mylar balloons - make them as light as air, Helium diffuses out quickly but if you use hydrogen you can create a chaff machine that uses two sheets of plastic, one coated with very thin aluminum. trap helium or hydrogen between them, then laminate and separate them into tiny tubes with neutral density so the residence time in air is quite a few hours with Hydrogen, lots less with helium. You can make it in advance, but popped popcorn fills a plane quickly, but unpopped corn allows you to mobilize more chaff in the plane. This would be a good method to fox radar guided missiles, or radar satellite surveys or launches. These short straws of Mylar would have the needed aerial residence time and could even be made to rise, loiter and then fall with the right choice of gasses (mixed hydrogen and helium allows a rise, followed by a fall as the helium diffuses out) - saves helium as well

aurizon 8y ago
both sheets need to be metallized to reduce diffusion across the film.

mcguire 8y ago

"The Red Hills MOA is relatively large, including areas of both Illinois and Indiana. We don't know if the MOA was active at the time the plume appeared on radar, but it might help explain the incident." The military releases "notices to airmen" (NOTAMs?) indicating when a MOA is in use, no?

zrail 8y ago

They issued an update today with quotes from the West Virginia Air National Guard: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west-virginia-air-guard-c-130h-was-responsible-for-massive-chaff-cloud-over-midwest http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west-virginia-a...

FlyMoreRockets 8y ago

You do realize we're in the middle of a fairly intense meteor storm, where lots of sand sized particles are turned to plasma when they hit the atmosphere, right? It was even today's Google Doodle.