THEORIES: INTELLIGENT LIGHT BALLS & EXTREMOPHILES

In Lo! (1931) Fort writes of “unknown, luminous things, or beings” that have often been seen, sometimes close to this earth, and sometimes high in the sky. “It may be that some of them were living things that occasionally come from somewhere else in our existence, but that others were lights on the vessels of explorers, or voyagers, from somewhere else.” Surveying a range of experiences for a 1982 study, Hilary Evans concluded that what he called BOLs (Balls of Light) display curiosity or rudimentary intelligence. Some insects and birds, such as ‘luminous owls’ ( FT386:14) display natural bioluminescence and have on occasions been reported as elusive wandering lights. But in his study Hilary went further to propose the existence of “some kind of creature or entity, inhabiting our atmosphere, possessing physical properties – albeit very different ones than those of any known earth creature; and endowed with a degree of intelligence” ( BOLs: an examination, Probe Report 3, 1 July 1982).

In a 2014 paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Howell Edwards describes the will o’the wisp or ignis fatuus (‘foolish fire’) as “one of the longest unexplained historical natural mysteries”. In a 1980 experiment, chemist Alan Mills attempted to conjure up will o’the wisp in his laboratory at Leicester University by bubbling marsh gas through a gallon-capacity glass bottle. But the “repulsively odoriferous” methane swamp gas produced failed to ignite or display the slightest luminosity when it escaped into the air. One major problem with the marsh gas theory is the fact that many recurring spooklights occur in mountainous or desert regions such as Norway, Colombia and the Australian outback. In his paper, Edwards compares the elusive nature of the marsh lights with recent discoveries of organisms called extremophiles that exist deep in the ocean and in parts of Antarctica. He speculates that similar organisms might be found on Mars, Europa and the atmosphere of Venus where phosphine and methane have been detected.

Edwards claims all scientific attempts to explain will o’the wisp have foundered due to the complete disappearance of the phenomenon since the 19th century (see also David Hambling, “On Swampy Ground”, FT180:14, and “Swamp Gas and corpse candles”, FT370:14). But this apparent absence may be an illusion. Mysterious lights that would once have been described as will o’the wisps are

regularly seen and reported today as UFOs or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) at both low and high altitudes. Indeed ‘marsh gas’ was famously invoked by Dr J Allen Hynek, in his role as advisor to the USAF Project Blue Book, as an explanation for a UFO flap in Michigan during 1966.

Others who have investigated UAPs on behalf of military or scientific organisations have placed their faith not in a biological source but in even more esoteric and elusive atmospheric phenomena: plasmas. Ball lightning, a glowing sphere that can range from the size of a pea to a football, has often been invoked as an explanation for puzzling UFO sightings. Ball lightning is associated with thunderstorms, and although it is estimated that some five per cent of the population have seen it, there are few convincing photographs and it has yet to be reproduced in a laboratory (see David Hambling, “Unfriendly Fire”, FT163:32-35). The unpredictable nature of ball lightning is shared with dusty plasmas, or pockets of superheated gas formed from ionised dust particles. This is one of the explanations put forward to explain the Hessdalen lights in Norway. Plasmas created by meteorite impacts in the upper atmosphere were proposed by the British defence scientist Dr Ron Haddow in his Project Condign study of UAP reports collected by the Ministry of Defence ( FT211:4-6; 396:28-29). Haddow believes that plasmas formed in the Earth’s atmosphere can descend to lower altitudes where they might be visible as disc or triangular shaped formations of lights, reported as UAPs.

Earthquake lights (or EQLs) are glowing lights that emerge from rocks subjected to seismic stress or via geochemical processes that generate electrical fields to produce glowing ‘earth lights’ in the lower atmosphere. Earthlights remain a fascinating but unproved explanation for spooklights and UAPs. FT contributor Paul Devereux gathered a substantial body of evidence from across the world, including some intriguing photographs, for his 1989 book Earthlights Revelation. But despite fresh reports every year, the idea of EQLs is still rejected by many seismologists (see FT337:14 and Sharon Hill, “Shake Rattle and Roll: The Mystery of Earthquake Lights”, FT382:44-49).

All the theories listed here suffer from exclusivity and only work if inconvenient and contradictory data is ignored. It is far more likely that transient luminous phenomena have a wide range of overlapping explanations. Some are undoubtedly misperceptions of man-made and natural light sources and others the result of optical mirages of the Min Min type. A few may be earthlights and/or other genuine anomalies and this makes scientific expeditions to study outbreaks such as those in Colombia and Norway all the more important.