Interesting....

[Beldaran]

Lasers or lightnign or other? (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/05/CAMERA.TMP)

NASA seems to be taking this pretty seriously.

[MottZilla]

It'd certainly be interesting if this was the cause of it.

[Ganonator]

but, Mott, what would have caused a purple glow? giant robotic Barneys?

[Golden Warrior]

Interesting. It sounds just like normal lightning to me. Although it could be something else. I've never seen or heard of purple lightning.

[Dechipher]

grr...


Pin iton us,,,, of course.

[gdorf]

Well, lightning does have a purple look to it sometimes. I'm really interested in seeing this photo. I'm sure if its anything big I'll see it in the news.

[Rijuhn]

Dude, I'm freaked out now. I wonder how the alien believers are taking this info. OMG it's aliens with lighting to strike us down if we try to explore "their" sky!! Oh no!!

Seriously, I'm not sure what to make of this. Maybe something to do with ionized air or something like that, and a lightning bolt of great power occured in the sky disabling or scrambling the electronic controls permanantly causing cooling systems to not function. The shuttle overheats, and/or a chain of events takes place in the cockpit to try and keep the shuttle maintained to it's course, but it's futile as the controls are down. A section of the damaged reveals highly combustable areas of the shuttle, and then boom.

[AtmaWeapon]

I'd like to see the picture before I go believing any old thing. The foam theory seems pretty valid to me.

[mikeron]

Lightning is an electrical discharge. You can get a variety of colors, depending on the materials involved. For example, anyone who's taken general chemistry should be familiar with fact that metals emit different colors when they burn.

[Jemsee]

It would seem too that if it is some sort of enhancement by the photographer they would have spotted it by now.
And you got to keep in mind, regular lighting coming between earth and clouds would not be up as high as they were.
If the pics are real its got to be some type of static discharge unique to that layer of atmosphere.

[Maverik X]

I'm with Atma. I want to see this picture before I make any decisions. However, it sounds like lightning is a plausable explination.