The white trails behind planes aren’t chemicals meant to poison people. They’re condensation trails, man-made clouds of water vapour. Physics explains them: they form when hot, humid exhaust gases meet freezing air at high altitude. Conspiracy theories often build on real secret experiments from the past. But none of that has anything to do with condensation trails.
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White trails behind planes are a perennial favourite of conspiracy theorists. They believe the trails are there to kill people or to spread disease, pests or viruses that turn people into zombies. Things have got so bad that the Ministry of the Environment itself had to issue a statement on ‘chemtrails’ to explain this aviation phenomenon.
Why? Because it couldn’t keep up with the questions and complaints from gardeners whose plots lie under flight paths. So what are those white trails behind planes? This article is part of my Milan Busts Myths series, where together we take apart travel myths people somehow believe.
What are the white trails behind planes, what are they for and why do they form?
They’re man-made clouds that form on bright, clear days. Their proper name is condensation trails, or contrails, and they are the result of an ordinary physical process. Planes fly at an altitude of 12 kilometres, where the temperature is usually about minus 50 degrees Celsius. Burning fuel produces water vapour, which leaves the engine along with the hot exhaust gases. In the freezing air it quickly condenses and freezes into tiny ice crystals. It’s the same reason you can see your breath in winter.
How did the chemtrail conspiracy theories start?
The idea that governments or other organisations are spraying the planet with chemicals from scheduled passenger flights began to surface in the 1990s. At first, the claim was that sprays containing a toxic metal and barium were being used to reduce the population. The idea has kept evolving, though, so today there are several chemtrail theories.
In recent years, believers have broadened their accusations. They claim that contrails are used to spread Covid-19, distribute vaccines, trigger ‘mind control’, reduce the population or somehow promote a ‘new world order’.
In the 1950s and 1960s, decades before the conspiracy theories were born, large parts of Britain were sprayed with airborne chemicals in a series of secret tests. The aim was to simulate how biological weapons would spread. In 1950 a ship sprayed San Francisco with bacteria to measure what a biological weapons attack would do to a populated area. Chemtrail conspiracy theorists point to secret experiments like these to lend their claims even more weight.
Milan
I’ve debunked another travel myth in my article The centre of Europe isn’t in Slovakia: here are all the contenders.
A Slovak travel blogger who has been getting Slovaks out of their office chairs since 2013. Author of the book Influencer and founder of the Bez Mapy blog. "Bez Mapy" is Slovak for "without a map".
