Mysterious white dust falling from the sky is sparking wild conspiracy theories
Topics: Science, Environment, Weather, Social Media, Viral
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: @cassandrarules/X
Topics: Science, Environment, Weather, Social Media, Viral
A mysterious white substance that was spotted falling from the sky last year long left people baffled.
Around February 2023, residents in some parts of the US spotted unusual white dust falling from the sky in what could only be described as looking like scenes from a movie.
The strange phenomena sparked a host of theories online after videos started emerging on TikTok, and some of them were pretty wild.
You can see it here:
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Experts also weighed in on the matter, including DC News Now meteorologist Damon Matson, who gave his best guess as to what it could be.
He said at the time: "This is likely dust from the desert southwest, a very strong storm system causing all the wintry weather across the northern US and severe weather in the southern US.
"It picked up the dust on the back side of the storm and dragged it across the country.
"The dust remained elevated in the atmosphere as the storm remained strong."
Elsewhere, people made comparisons to the one of the biggest films to be released in 2023, Cocaine Bear.
In a comment under a video posted by the user @stevensaysstuff, one person joked that the powder is a pretty incredible marketing stunt for the much talked about film.
And some speculated that the dust could be residue from the then-recent Ohio train derailment, where a fire started in more than 12 of the carriages due to toxic chemicals on board.
But this theory was quickly shut down by officials, with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection saying there was no link to the derailment and the substance.
Eventually, the department gave a definitive answer as to what the usual substance was after analyzing dust samples.
It penned on X on February 27 in an update: "Final results from the dust samples collected Friday indicate the material is predominately pollen, with trace amounts of mineral matter.
"The samples were analyzed by by WVU's Dept. of Geology and Geography and WVU's Shared Research Facility."
Well, there you have it folks.
More recently, people have been left very confused after a mysterious 'explosion' lit up California's skies.
The shocking moment was captured on video, showing several objects burning up across the sky, leaving burning trails behind them.
Some speculated that the object was some kind of meteor, but The Aerospace Corporation (a non-profit organisation funded by the US) later said it was likely to be 'space junk'.
'Space junk' is the remains of satellites or any other human-made object orbiting the Earth which re-enters the atmosphere, where it burns up or crashes.