Hessdalen, a valley in Norway, is well-known for its unexplained light phenomena. There are many places around the world where weird lights, glowing orbs, etc. allegedly have been observed, but Hessdalen has some hard data that most of these places lack: in addition to eye witness accounts, an automatic measuring station has been continuously monitoring the lights since 1998, recording about 20 occurrences every year. Although the answer to the mystery is unlikely to be supernatural or extraterrestrial (understatement), the official explanation, “an incompletely understood combustion process in the air involving clouds of dust from the valley floor containing scandium”, isn’t very satisfying to either the skeptic or the true believer.
Sep 5, 2010