Letxa.com

The webmaster of RadarMatrix makes the allegation that something fishy caused Senator Wellstone's plane to crash in Minnesota on October 25, 2002 at 10:20am. The claim is that some kind of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) caused a problem with the aircraft and subsequently led to the crash. EMPs are bursts of energy that cause electrical failure of devices within the area of effect of the EMP. He then produces the following image from an infrared satellite image and draws attention to the black lines, which he calls "magnetic strips", which appeared on the image to the north and south of the airport where Wellstone's plane went down. His original claims may be found here.

FACTS OF THE CASE

The claims of such a high-tech conspiracy to kill the senator are not based in science.

First, an EMP causes severe problems with electronics in its area of influence. It is not a directed beam, but the affects are spread out in all directions from the burst. Had an EMP been employed against Wellstone's plane it would have affected all other electrical devices in line-of-sight including any nearby power lines which would have propagated the effect outside the area. While the possibility that the U.S. military has directed-EMP weapons is not entirely impossible, it is only speculation.

Second, since an EMP pretty much destroys everything that uses electricity, including engines and motors, we would expect the engines of a plane targeted by an EMP to shut down. However, evidence indicates that the engines on Wellstone's plane were operating when the plane crashed.

Perhaps most interestingly, however, is the IR satellite image above that the webmaster at RadarMatrix provides us with as evidence.

If you'll look at the time/date stamp on the image you'll see it is 10/25/02 at 05:15Z (Zulu). That equates to UTC or GMT. During Daylight Savings Time, which was in effect on 10/25/02, "Zulu" is 5 hours ahead of Central Daylight Time. That means that the satellite image provided at RadarMatrix at 0515Z was at 12:15am Centrail Daylight Time--over 10 hours before the Wellstone accident. When the above satellite image was taken the Wellstones and their plane were in St. Paul far outside the area enclosed by the "magnetic strips." So what relevance the above "evidence" has on a crash that occurred 10 hours later is very questionable.

Of course, the black lines, or "magnetic strips," are themselves irrelevant. While he suggests they are magnetic strips or some kind of signature of an EMP and somehow provoked by other radar anomalies (which themselves are irrelevant), the reality is that these are simply communications errors between the satellite and the receiving station. The GOES satellites from which these images are received operate in geosync orbit at approximately 22,000 miles above the equator. They are constantly making observations and transmitting data back to scientists and meteorologists, and they do a good job most of the time. But just like your cell phone occasionally has interference problems, so do satellites. If a satellite experiences interference during the transmission of the IR imagery, "noise" will be apparent in the resulting image.

While monitoring GOES imagery for a few days, here are a few examples of similar anomalies that I observed:

These are just a few examples. It seems that these kind of anomalies are pretty common on the GOES West satellite but, even so, appear from time to time on the GOES East satellite. That these relatively common communications problems happen at any given time is not particularly surprising and certainly not evidence of a conspiracy to kill a senator.

CONCLUSION

The evidence that RadarMatrix presents is flawed. The satellite anomaly presented is almost definitely a communications problem that can often be observed in different forms and magnitudes by constantly monitoring GOES satellite imagery. And even if the satellite imagery presented by RadarMatrix were something besides a communications error, the anomaly occurred more than 10 hours before the Wellstone accident.

The suggestion that the Wellstone crash was anything but an accident is completely unfounded based on the "evidence" provided by RadarMatrix.