[freebeard]

The code had easily identified bugs, no visible test mechanism, was not apparently under version control and was poorly documented.

That's four different things.

I like the way coders think. To quote one at random "I want to die on Mars, just not when we land." If your going to do wishful thinking do it right.

Then there's this:

The "Local Bubble" of low-density, hot
and ionized gas, is actually part of a
tube-like chimney that extends through
the local region of the spiral disk
into the surrounding galactic halo,
and so may can act as a vent for the
energetic hot gas produced by
supernovae (more)

______

Edit:

I would suspect an instrument failure - it has happened before...

A popular thing on Suspicious0bservers is 'buoy in event mode', where a particular buoy in midocean is reporting the depth of the ocean is rising and falling tens of hundreds of feet, really fast.