Only a few months earlier, scientists at Area 51 had been baffled by those black dots. They worried it was some kind of high-atmosphere corrosion until the mystery was solved in the lab. It turned out the black spots were dead bugs that were cycling around in the upper atmosphere, blasted into the jet stream by the world’s two superpowers’ rally of thermonuclear bombs. The bugs were killed in the bombs’ blasts and sent aloft to ninety thousand feet in the ensuing mushroom clouds where they gained orbit.

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- Annie Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base

Great. So there is a floating layer of dead black bugs in our atmosphere thanks to the nuclear tests of the 50’s and 60’s.

(Source: kindle.amazon.com)