Glenn Reynolds has a roundup - amongst his voluminous Columbia coverage - of those in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East who claim the disaster was a message from Allah. UFO author Der Voron believes it might have been a message from aliens:

Let us analyze the facts:

1) The breakup occurred at a very great height, over 40 miles. This excludes any possibility for the supposed Earth-based attacker to shoot it down with existing land-to-air missiles, as none of them are able to reach the height of even close to 40 miles. Others may entertain the possibility of an attack, with the use of special missiles or laser guns, launched by a Russian satellite, another space device, or a Russian high-altitude strategic bomber (e.g. TU-95
or TU-160) that somehow could approach or cross the US border. Those who believe that this is the truth may use, as a kind of "supportive information", the following fact: just about 20 minutes after the crash, RosAviaCosmos, the Russian space agency, declared that it might have been caused by a technical defect. But the problem is that some other specialists made their own (different) claims in the same time period.

2) Some sources, including RosAviaCosmos, claim that a little fragment of Shuttle's protective surface layer that had fallen off the Shuttle during its start on January 16, 2003, caused the formation of further splits, which then resulted in an explosion. Other sources, however, claim that during the time the Columbia was in the orbit, NASA specialists analyzed this problem and came to
conclusion that it couldn't influence the flight. This sounds a bit odd, since unprotected areas can very easily get caught in fire — because of air friction.

So actually, there may be two explanations for Columbia's crash:

I) Hot air friction sparked a fire in the damaged (unprotected) area while Columbia was descending at a speed of about 3.8 miles per second. The fire burnt through the unprotected area, and then reached the internal areas of the shuttle, its engines and fuel tanks.

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