If what we are seeing is the tail end of the rocket (accounting for the bright spiral and all the pretty colors ... oooooooh) and that rocket did, in fact, malfunction then perhaps the expanding dark spot is some sort of smoke expelled by the rockets exhaust, hence we get the dark expanding spot instead of the bright spirally light (I watched the video again ... pretty lightsssss). Probably is exaggerated by eyes playing tricks and going from relative bright to relative dark (possibly further exaggerated by the electronic device as well). Then again maybe it's an evil villain opening a portal to our world from an alternate universe. He should be leading his triumphant army through town at any minute.

It's a russian missile launch gone bad.

I told you the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would create a black hole. We are all doomed...

A better explanation:
http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2009/12/a_great_example_of_a_model.php

Fairly simple explanation that doesn't reference exotic notions of physics or capabilities and given the Russians openly admit that it is one of their rockets screwing up I'm inclined to think that the issue is pretty much settled.

Then again there will always be those who will want to claim exotic 'matrix weapons' and weather control devices, devices that have been rumored, but never actually shown, to exist, are to blame. I'm pretty sure that we could find someone with a religious bent that would claim that it is 'a sign from God'.

Again a completely over simplistic simulation which does not take into account the atmospheric effects and the scale and the symmetry of the event.

If you take the event as being a missile launch from the white sea then the diameter of the event is 160-180 miles in diameter and the growing black disk consumes the diameter in a few to 10s of seconds meaning the diameter is expanding at 10-25 miles per sec or between 36,000 - 90,000 mph, which would mean the propellant exit velocity will be many many times this according to the simulation.

This is not a missile launch gone wrong being viewed at over 800+ km or 500+ miles away.

I have no explanation for what this is and I am absolutely stumped.

Looks like the vortex that consumed the USS Nimitz in the movie The Final Countdown.

Has anyone counted the aircraft carriers lately?

from what I gather (and saw a snapshot of one of the other failures of the same booster), the thrust (either one of the vernier engines or some other reason) gets asymetrical, and the rocket actually starts to sprial, and of course, the vernier on the other side does try to compensate - so you have 2-3 engines seperated by a few feet going around in a sprial (from the small snapshot I saw, it looked like it went inside - OUT, and then was destroyed - if they were late on the range safety package, or there was none, I can see this happening

I was living 500km from the Russian missile testing facility in Kazakstan (Semipalatinsk). I didn't saw anything exactly like that, but what I saw was not less spectacular, or less unexplainable. At times the entire sky was involved in the show. And they did trigger an UFO rumors many times, especially in the reckless silence of the official Soviet mass media.

Alex, what a coincidence - I spent about 6 years at the Kumkol oilfield in Kazakstan, about 200 km NE of Baikonur, where the Russians launch to space. I saw several launches. Daylight launches we could just see a vapour trail. Night launch is more visual but still nothing like the photo above...

somehow, that photo reminds me of aurora borealis, although I've never seen anything so symetrical before.

I have seen mirages many times in the desert, so I know that light & distance can do strange things.

Perhaps it was in the recent time, when Baikonur became just a commercial launch pad? (no new technology tests prone to failure). By the way, I saw hundreds of launches, only a handful of them went wrong in a spectacular way.

Well, I am still going with a rocket theory. Why? Because I doubt the Soviet Union has created some time-space continuum machine, I doubt we shot anything down with a laser, and I reject all alien life form visitation theories, as those are, in my opinion, ludicrous. So, the obvious answer still stands-rocket launch gone wrong. Isnt that called Okhams Razor?