NASA looking for another lame explanation? SPIRALS!

Well I came across this today and just had to post it, a new phenomenon? it's a rocket producing ripples in the air, remember the Norway Spiral pictured below, well yes, this one was published by NASA a couple of day's ago and is nothing like the wonderful spiral we saw in Norway, the Russian's tried to pass that one off as ripples in the air caused by a failed missile, why do I get the impression this is a lame effort by NASA to link the two together?
Click on image to enlarge

Exceptional Rocket Waves Destroy Sun Dog
Credit & Copyright: George C. Privon (U. Virginia)
Explanation: What created those rocket waves, and why did they destroy that sun dog? Close inspection of the above image shows not only a rocket rising near the center, but unusual air ripples around it and a colorful sundog to the far right. The rocket, carrying the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), lifted off two weeks ago from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA into a cold blue sky. The SDO is designed to observe the Sun continuously over the next several years, exploring the Sun's atmosphere at high resolution and fast time scales. The air ripples -- seen about one minute after launch -- were unexpected, as was the sudden disappearance of the sundog after the ripples passed. Noticed and recorded by several onlookers, there has been much speculation about the origin of the ripples. An ongoing discussion about them can be joined here in APOD's discussion board the Asterisk. A leading hypothesis holds that the ripples resulted from a sonic boom created as the rocket broke the sound barrier, which then jumbled a thin layer of ice crystals that were aligned to create the sundog. Lingering questions include why other rocket launches don't produce air ripples as noticeable, and why the ripples appeared more prominent above the rocket. If you know of images of any other aircraft or spacecraft that have produced similar air ripples, please post them to the discussion thread -- they may be help create a better understanding of the effect.

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The giant, glowing white “Norway spiral” (see video) was visible all over northern Norway between about 6:45 to 7 GMT on 9th December. It initially consisted of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora* with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end, according to eye witness Nick Banbury of Harstad reports Spaceweather.com. “This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to Earth.”


There was initial speculation that it might be a bright meteor but that dismissed because the Norway Spiral lasted for too long to be a meteor. Current suspicion by scientist Jonathan McDowell (as mentioned to New Scientist), an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is that it is an out-of-control Russian missile (blame it on Russians, eh?). However Russian authorities haven’t yet confirmed it. This speculation also looks questionable to me simple because who has seen such a spectacle before from wayward missiles before?

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Visit The Big Wobble Website HERE! It's still under construction but well worth a look

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