If we look out into a blue sky on any of these clear fall days, we may see long, thin, white streams of “clouds.” They usually are “contrails” caused as airliners fly at high altitudes and disturb cold, moist air, creating ice crystals.
But Monday over Southern California, there was an unusual vapor trail that no one has explained with certainty.
“Nobody within the Department of Defense that we’ve reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is,” a Pentagon spokesman said initially — though the Pentagon and NASA later said it was probably caused by an airliner.
Others have had theories but no sure answers.
Was it a missile? Was it a spy plane? It obviously was no attack on our country. Some suggest it might even have been an “optical illusion,” but clear photos made that illogical.
Was our country — or some other — conducting some kind of secret test? Federal authorities say no.
But it certainly became a subject of much interest and conjecture all this week.