Anyway, thanks, everyone. That is very helpful. My guess, from reading the above, is that the scientist would try to explain it away (not wanting to admit that they had no idea), but that there wouldn't be much of a scientific explanation - leaving the field wide open for other interpretations.
Exactly. Plenty of theories to float (and knock down), but ultimately, you'd be grasping at straws. Clearly,
something happened, but the possibilities are so incredibly unlikely that there'd be no clear backing for any of them.
(For the record, the "completely inelastic" comment was specifically in reference to the idea of bounce-back. I was treating the dust cloud as a separate issue.)
