In the Hessdalen valley, unexplained lights appear in the sky — floating silently, shifting color, occasionally lasting over an hour. Unlike most UFO stories, this one comes with instruments: since 1998 an automatic 'Blue Box' station has watched the valley around the clock. Decades of radar hits, photographs, and magnetometer spikes later, there is still no accepted explanation.
The overview: what the lights look like, when they peaked (up to 20 sightings a week in the early 1980s), and the competing theories — ionized dust, plasma, piezoelectric rock, a valley-sized battery — none of which fully fit.
New Scientist's short look at actual footage of the phenomenon — the glowing forms that sent researchers and sensors into one of the quietest corners of Norway.
The English trailer for a 2023 documentary made by the people who live with the lights — four decades of a valley 'haunted' by something that still refuses to be pinned down.
The researchers' own home base — a volunteer citizen-science effort running since 1983, with live sky cameras, stacked images, witness logs, and the data that turned a ghost story into an open scientific problem.
Meet the Automatic Measurement Station — magnetometer, radar, three cameras in a blue container — billed as the world's first automated anomaly-detection system, watching the valley unmanned since August 1998.
HISTORY examines the hard data — radar returns with no visible light, lights appearing during magnetic pulsations — and the frustrating fact that measuring a thing is not the same as explaining it.
One of the boldest theories: an engineer argues the valley's slopes act as electrodes and a polluted river as electrolyte, turning Hessdalen into a natural battery. A Norwegian physicist is distinctly unconvinced.