Going on an exciting journey into the world of mysteries and wonders of nature, one cannot ignore such an interesting problem as the wandering lights. Scientists from many countries, considering the nature of this phenomenon, put forward many amazing hypotheses and bold assumptions.
Some of the most famous wandering lights are the Min-Min lights. The phenomenon of these ghostly lights has haunted the inhabitants of southwest Queensland in Australia throughout the 20th century. This phenomenon occurs quite regularly. The fires took a fancy to the 18 km2 wasteland called Alexandria Station.
One of the well-known, although not the very first, encounters with the wandering lights was the case of a local shepherd. It happened in March 1940. While driving his car on the road between Bowlia and Varenda, he noticed a suspicious glow above the cemetery.
This intrigued him, and the shepherd stopped the car. Imagine his surprise when the light gradually took shape into a ball the size of a watermelon and swam right at him. There was only one thing left - to flee. The frightened man drove the car to the nearest town of Boulia. When he came to, he said that a luminous ball accompanied him all the way to the city.
Many travelers, who found themselves on the same deserted road in the middle of Alexandria Station, met amazing, like dancing spots of light on their way. They were not always ball-shaped. Sometimes the omens were like a candle flame that flickered and moved from place to place. They seemed to beckon somewhere. Local shepherds say that often foggy glowing discs soar over the horizon, sometimes they accompany grazing flocks of sheep on the desert plains.
The Min-Min lights have long become an integral "horror story" of local folklore. Legend has it that many centuries ago they were scared of naughty children by the aborigines. Like any unexplained phenomenon, the Min-Ming lights lead Australians to think that they are being haunted by the souls of the dead who do not want to leave the earth, or that these are tiny creatures with UFOs. They fantasized to the point that they said that the Min-Ming lights are hares with fireflies hiding in their fur.
Scientists put forward different hypotheses: the glow of radioactive fallout, the glow of gas as a result of friction of crystalline rocks in tectonic faults. An attempt to compare the Min-Ming lights with ball lightning was untenable. Wandering lights are inherent in quite "friendly behavior" towards people.
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The Australian scientist Jack Pettigrew made a serious attempt to unravel the mystery of the Ming-Ming lights. He even tried to experimentally reproduce this mysterious glow. Pettigrew himself met the lights twice. They had a spherical shape, sometimes changing color, dancing over the horizon. When trying to get closer to them, the lights moved with the scientist. After analyzing many cases of the appearance of Ming-Ming lights, he made the following conclusions:
1. Lights appear regularly in certain places.
2. Their shape and behavior depend on the specifics of the landscape and weather conditions.
This is how the theory of the "tunnel effect" or "fata morgana" (mirage) arose. Simply put, light travels without scattering in the layer of cold air between the surface of the earth and a layer of warmer air. Due to the anomalous distribution of the refractive index, bending of the light rays occurs. Jack Pettigrew thinks the Min-Min lights are mirages. Who knows …
Local authorities quickly made the mysterious light profitable. In the town of Boulia, the Min-Ming Museum of Lights was built, T-shirts and badges with the image of a mysterious light are selling well. But a funny question arises why the incomprehensible lights are named after the Min-Min brothel in the town of Boulia …
The United States of America can also boast of its mysterious lights. The most famous of these are the Martha Lights in West Texas. They got their name from the mining district and town of the same name. Their peculiarity is that they often change their color and disappear when they try to get closer.
"Fire fever" swept the area in the 60s of the XX century. Whole expeditions were organized, people tried to chase Martha's lights on horses and cars. But the ghostly lights seemed to be playing hide and seek.
Here are some examples of encounters with these mysterious lights. Long remembered July 16, 1952, two patrol officers who drove late at night on a deserted road in Maryland. Suddenly, ahead of them, they saw a yellow luminous spot that moved towards them.
As soon as the law enforcement officers stopped, the spot also became disciplined, hovering in front of them at a height of 6 meters. The policemen slowly moved forward and tried to catch up with the glowing ghost, but the light increased its speed, flew to the side and disappeared.
Someone Alan Nichols heard a lot about this mysterious phenomenon and decided to investigate it. After driving nearly 1,000 kilometers from Dallas on Highway 90, he found himself between the towns of Martha and Alpino. This is where his first date with the luminous ghosts took place.
“I saw in the distance colorful balls of fire that flew into the sky, merged, separated again and rushed down. They changed colors, becoming green, yellow, blue, sometimes orange. The balls shone brightly, dimmed, dissolved in the darkness and re-ignited. I assumed they were a few miles away and maybe the size of a volleyball or basketball."
Elvira Peña, a resident of Redford, often has to travel from Martha to Presidio. Twice her car was chased by unusual lights. 16 kilometers from Martha, late in the evening, she saw a light behind the rear bumper of the car.
He held onto her car as if glued, and then suddenly disappeared. The second incident occurred near Shefter: two bright orange lights chased Elvira, but these were not the headlights of another car, as they soon flew in different directions.
The area for observing the glowing ghosts is one of the most picturesque places in Texas - an 80-kilometer stretch of highway between Presidio and Lightas. There are basketball-sized yellowish-orange lights taking off and moving along the river on both sides of the river. A resident of these places, Manuela Jimenez, said that she saw two lights merge over the Rio Grande River. One flew in from the United States and the other from Mexico.
A phosphorescent spot the size of a football field was observed by local pilot Cecil Duncan as he flew over Mitchell Flat.
Some stories about mysterious lights are more like science fiction. In the book by Elton Miles, "Stories of the Great River," you can find stories of how fires chased and burned cars, jeeps and trucks. Sometimes passengers disappeared, leaving the melted cars in place, sometimes they went crazy or fell into a state of shock.
In the book "Martha's Lights" by Judith M. Bryuske, the story of a UFO encounter is published. Gloria Rodriguez from Crystal City in 1981 was at the observation post in Mitchell Flat. According to her, she saw how a bright "star" rushed down from the sky to meet one of Martha's lights. A very bright light blinded her, filling the interior of the car. Until the lights went away, she could not start the engine. Such cases give reason to believe that, perhaps, a base of flying saucers is hidden in the local mountains.
There are several other places in the United States where unusual luminous objects are observed. These are the lights of Brown Mountain and Mako in North Carolina, the ghost lights in Hornet, Missouri.
Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Robert Creasy, Edson Hendricks and Irwin Vader are trying to scientifically determine the nature of these mysterious phenomena. They installed sensitive electronic equipment to pick up signals, detect radio frequencies, and measure electromagnetic fields associated with the lights.
Maybe they will be able to establish a relationship between solar activity, the electromagnetic field of the earth and the activity of the fires of Martha. Edson Hendrix, who was skeptical at the beginning of the research, in an interview with a journalist for The Times, spoke about his impressions of meeting Martha's lights:
“I saw two white balls of fire. They began to change colors from red to yellow. One of them was surrounded by a halo of bright red sparks. Then the balls changed places, as if they were spinning around each other. Two or three minutes later, another balloon flew up from the bushes a hundred meters from me. It shone like a lump of burning magnesium, like fireworks, but without smoke or smell. I was immediately blinded. It was simply impossible to confuse this thing with any man-made fire."
And Martha resident Fritz Kal said that "looking for the source of the lights is the same as trying to grab a rainbow."
Great Britain can also be safely called a country of mysterious light. From the time of Shakespeare, documents have survived that describe strange low night lights. For several centuries they managed to acquire original, expressive names: "Jack Ophonarely", "Body Light" or "Body Candle".
Popular rumor has long ascribed an "unclean" origin to ghostly lights, seeing in them the intrigues of witches. Sometimes they are denounced as the wandering souls of slain villains. British folklore convinces people that all the activity of the fires is an attempt to lure a person into a swamp or other unsafe place, since British lights are clearly unfriendly towards people, unlike their "brethren" from Australia and the United States.
Theories and hypotheses about phosphorescent rot and fungi, and about bacteria on owls' feathers seem to be more pragmatic. It also goes so far that ghost lights are considered the side lights of cars moving in the distance. A more modern hypothesis is the glow of radioactive mineral deposits. Conservative English people prefer the standard scientific explanation: it is just methane, spontaneously released by the swamp land and igniting spontaneously.
Rationalist scientists have tried to mimic the characteristics of wandering lights. Artificial swamps were created at the landfills, the escaping methane was ignited, but attempts to recreate the behavior of the mysterious glow failed. Moreover, cases of the appearance of lights are noted far from swamps, places favored by owls, and busy highways. So, such simple hypotheses do not bring us one step closer to solving those cases in which the "Body Light" clearly pursues some reasonable goal.
And this case happened in Czechoslovakia in 1977 on the highest (1602 m) peak of the Sudetenland - Mount Sniezka. Bad weather and heavy snowfall found a married couple at its summit. Tourists lost their way and got lost. The situation began to take on a threatening character: people could freeze and die, especially since night was approaching. Suddenly, tourists saw a bluish ball a few meters from the ground, which emitted soft light and warmth.
He seemed to float above the ground. Some inexplicable instinct prompted people that this light was not hostile. Following the ball that illuminated the road, the couple descended the mountainside. And only when the first houses of the city with lighted windows appeared, the saving light bade them farewell. What was it? Obviously not methane, as many in foggy Albion suggest.
Russia is also marked by a mysterious natural phenomenon called "Kuril Light". The first mentions of the mysterious glow appeared during the development of Alaska by Russian sailors. The observation region of this phenomenon is geographically limited - these are Kamchatka, the Kuril and Japanese islands. Experienced sailors dubbed it the "Kuril Light".
With the development of aviation in the 20th century, numerous air routes lay over this region. Passengers of international flights have repeatedly observed the mysterious greenish glow of the sky over the Kuril Islands through the windows through the windows.
The beauty and singularity of a natural phenomenon turned out to be not so harmless. "Kuril Light" behaved aggressively: interference disrupted radio communications, devices and compasses on ships failed. Oil tankers were hit by powerful electrical discharges. All this was fraught with danger for passengers and sailors.
The sailors and the leadership of the headquarters of the Pacific Navy in June 1956 had to endure several alarming hours. Captain of the third rank A. V. Khomyakov reported to the headquarters of the Navy in his report:
“At midnight I took over as the commander of the watch on the bridge. By local standards, the weather was good: wind 2-3, low cloudiness, heapy, good visibility. At about one in the morning it somehow brightened on the bridge, although the night was moonless. It became so bright that it was possible to distinguish individual objects on the deck.
And suddenly a glow appeared on the metal parts. It began from above and quickly descended down the entire rigging. Two minutes later, the contours of the antennas and rigging lit up with a lifeless white light, like the light of neon tubes. On the bridge it became so light that you could read.
I asked the mechanic and radio operator about the state of the mechanisms and radio equipment. The mechanic reported that all mechanisms are working properly, the electrical systems are in order. The radio operator reported strong interference of unknown origin.
It is not possible to establish contact with the shore. Half an hour passed, and the glow gradually began to fade and soon disappeared. But for several more hours, strong radio interference was observed on the air. There was no thunderstorm or rain either that day or the next."
This is how the mysterious "Kuril Light" once showed itself.
Scientists of the USSR and the USA in 1973 attempted hydrological research in the Kuril and Japanese islands. They worked on American and Soviet courts. On the American ship, which fell into the zone of operation of the "Kuril Light", complex electronic equipment was out of order.
Our devices were simpler and therefore survived. A command came from “above”: to study the obtained data, attract specialists from various fields of knowledge and figure it out. In the fall of 1973, a closed meeting was held in the village of Dolgoprudny near Moscow.
Based on the reports of the Pacific Fleet sailors, as well as military pilots, experts in the field of atmospheric physics and atmospheric electricity made an attempt to understand the essence of the phenomenon of the "Kuril light". The results of the meeting were not published.
In 1974, a conference on atmospheric electricity problems was held in Moscow. Professor I. M. Imyanitov was asked a question about the nature of the mysterious "Kuril light". He could not answer in detail the questions of the journalist of the Trud newspaper. However, on June 13, 1974, a small article “Mysterious Light in the Ocean” appeared in the newspaper. In fact, this is one of the first official reports in the Soviet press about serious scientific research in the field of anomalous atmospheric phenomena (AAP).
Here is what was written in an article about this phenomenon: “More than once sailors and travelers, sailing not far from the Kuril Islands, saw a bright spot suddenly appear on the horizon in the darkness of the night. It moved quickly and increased literally before our eyes. The giant oval was often 400 m wide. A column of light went far up from him. The "magic light" worked wonders: the compass needle began to dance.
People's hair crackled, long sparks flew from silk, and some objects shone for some reason. This phenomenon has been familiar to the inhabitants of Japan and the Far East for hundreds of years. It is called the "burning circle", "shining cloud", "Kuril light". However, scientists still cannot explain the nature of this phenomenon."
But at a closed meeting in Dolgoprudny, after long disputes, they came to the conclusion that "Kuril Light" is a combination of two natural phenomena. One of them is observed on the surface of the sea, and the other - high in the stratosphere.
Both phenomena are associated with volcanic activity in the region. The answers to many questions have not yet been found, but it is generally accepted that the "Kuril Light" is a sign of trouble. And scientists have to decide whether there is a relationship between wandering light in different parts of our planet.