Watching some news video on TV of the Malaysian airliner crash, I saw some puzzling images on the video. I’ve been searching for a copy of it on the net, but haven’t found it yet.

The video seems to be taken by an amateur, and it shows a plume of black smoke, perhaps several miles away. The plane and crash site are invisible, but the aircraft is certainly already on the ground..

Silhouetted against the main black smoke plume are four vertical white streaks. They resemble the rocket exhaust contrails you often see on old films of nuclear bomb tests, smoke trails used to help determine the movement of air masses near the fireball. These vertical streaks appear to be drifting with the wind from R to L, along with the black plume itself, so they are real, not an artifact of the video process.

Its tempting to think these are things that were falling alongside the aircraft, but the plane is clearly on the ground already, and has been there for some time. They are probably white smoke, but they are also reminiscent of an unrolled paper roll falling from a great height, think of a roll of toilet paper dropped from a great height or building, with one end of it secured at the top of the building. As the roll unwinds during its fall, it would appear from a distance to be a vertical white streak silhouetted against the building. However, in this video, the wreckage appears to be too far away for a roll of bathroom tissue to give this visual signature.

Perhaps one of you has seen this video on TV, or will stumble across it on the net somewhere, and can venture a guess. I’m baffled by it.