The ‘Hessdalen Phenomenon’ soon came up on our skywatching radar, as a 15 km valley in Norway, where there had been multiple and consistent sightings. Many of them appear as strange hovering balls of strong flashing light, some as large as cars, floating around, gliding by house windows, or zipping down the valley before suddenly fading away. There are even daytime sightings that look like metallic objects in the sky. Early UFO enthusiasts took this as a sign that the valley was a portal to other world.
But the strange bursts of light in the sky attracted physicists, too, interest piqued by the idea of some unexplained natural phenomenon.
In 1983, Associate Professor Erling P. Strand, along with four individual field researchers began to investigate this phenomena, with no official government support. Erling works at the Østfold University College as a teacher in the Department of Information Technology. He has a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Trondheim and studied physical electronics and telecommunications. Erling is also the European representative of the Society for Scientific Exploration.
Erling, as the Project Manager, soon set up Project Hessdalen to unite more experts in unravelling the mystery of the mysterious orbs. Twice a year, for 14 days, the science teams measure the size, shape and speed of the orbs using a wide range of equipment to examine the elements that make up the light. These included optical spectrum cameras, film cameras, geiger counters, weather stations, magnetometers to detect changes in the magnetic field and electromagnetic radiation meters to look at the electromagnetic spectrum.
Smaller ball of light, comes out of larger ones, while some balls of light come out as well. Perhaps it’s more than one thing that’s being studied!!
In 1998, Erling also installed an automatic measurement station, a blue box, that streams live data to the internet.
We set up base for a week, conducting in depth interviews with several of the students, and monitoring their dedicated scientific study of this particular phenomenon.
We also had a chance opportunity to meet Prof. Lachezar Filipov, Deputy Director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. An astrophysicist, Professor Filipov is often confronted with the question of how life came to being and if there are extraterrestrial forms in outer space.
As well, we were able to use our military-grade Gen 3 night vision scopes, and witnessed the materialization of a brilliantly lit orb, above the mountains of the Hessdalen Valley.
Following two expeditions, one in the fall and one in the winter, many questions surfaced from our own experiences and the information we gathered. Could the unique geology of the valley be responsible? The valley is formed by rocks on one side rich in copper and the other rich in iron and zinc—not unlike the cathode and anode of a battery. Sulfuric acid, leached from the abandoned sulfur mine at the bottom of the valley, could then turn the river into the weak acid of an electrolyte. But where does the charge to energize this plasma come from?
The Hessdalen phenomenon seems especially common after a display of Northern Lights. The idea of a valley-battery created by natural geology and charged by solar winds coming from 90 million miles away feels like a far more astonishing explanation than aliens!
Each is an equal part of a mystery that is known as … the Hessdalen Phenomena.
