What Is the Will-o'-the-Wisp, So Rare and Evasive That It Has Virtuall Escaped Scientific Scrutiny? What Causes Ball Lightning and the "Unknown Light of Japan"? Such Displays of Light Are Puzzles for Which Science Has Never Evolved Satisfactory Solutions
At Ringstead Bay, on the south coast of England, one afternoon in August, 1876, two ladies, Mrs. Warry and Miss Warry, were walking along the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. The weather was calm, hot and sultry, and occasional sheet lightning had been seen throughout the day. Surrounding them on all sides and extending from a few inches to several feet above the ground they observed numerous globes of light, the size of billiard balls, which were moving independently and vertically, up and down, sometimes within a few inches of the observers, but always eluding their grasp.
"The balls," say a report of this occurence published in "The Quarterly Journal" of the Royal Meteorological Society, "were all aglow; but not dazzling; with a soft superb iridescence, rich and warm of hue. Their numbers were continually fluctuating. At one time thousands of them apparently enveloped the observers, and a few minutes afterwards the numbers would dwindle to perhaps as few as twenty, but soon they would be swarming again as numerous as ever. Not the slightest noise accompanied this display."
The ladies viewed the strange spectacle for more than an hour before going home, leaving the lights still dancing on the cliff.
So runs their tale, as recorded in a scientic journal of eminent respectability. The tale is not necessarily true; but neither is it necessary false. The reasson you cannot dismiss it with a shrug of your shoulders is that, far from being a unique report of an improbable event, it is one of a host of more or less similar stories presented in publications having no affinity with yellow journalism.
In this case, as in many others, the persons reporting their experiences were not trained observers. They may have been overendowed with imagination. One may even suggest?after a discreet lapse of fifty-odd years?that they were fond of romancing at the expense of a gullible community. What shall we say, however, when matter-of-fact scientific men of unimpeachable veracity report similar encounters?
Nobody, for example, is better qualified to give us an accurate account of any luminous manifestation he has witnessed than Dr. Matthew Luckiesh, who has published several well known books on the subject of natural and artificial light, and who a few years ago recorded a personal observation of something the he classified as will-o'-the-wisp, or ignis fatuus. This classification is not an explanation of what he saw, because, though the will-o'-the-wisp has been known to mankind for ages, the mystery of its origin and nature has never been solved.
Dr. Luckiesh was tramping one dark night in January over the desert between Goodsprings, Nev., and Ivanpah, Calif. About 2 a. m. he came to an area where one of the region's rare showers and the melting of snow in the near-by mountains had left some temporary shallow pools of water. Suddenly, as he was wading through one of these, he saw a luminous object floating in the air. As its size and distance were unknown, it might have been taken for the light from a cabin window but for the fact that there was no human habitation within twenty miles.
Presently the light sailed off a little distance to one side and then stopped. Soon others appeared; some floating apparently stationary, others darting here and there. When the display was at its height hundreds of individual lights were visible simultaneously, and they continued to be seen for an hour or more.
The suggestion "fireflies" will probably occur to you. But, apart from the fact that firefiles are practically unknown in the region mentioned, remember that the observer in this case was not only a skilled man of science but one who had specialized for years in the study of luminous phenomena. Is is inconceivable that he could have failed to recognize these familiar insects.
Neither does it seem likely that firefiles or any of the other common varieties of luminous living matter (of which there are several) could have deceived Professor L. A. Hausman when, in April, 1921, he saw objects that he, too, identified as will-o'-the-wisp. Professor Hausman is an experienced naturalist who teaches zoology at Rutgers University. He observed the display about 9 o'clock in the evening, near Cayutaville, N. Y.
"It consisted," he says, "of five separate flames or globules of bluish light about the size of half-dollar pieces, waveringly suspended, apparently in midair, among some reeds and bushes above a marshy tract of ground and about fifteen feet from the roadway."
These two recent cases of the so-called will-o'-the-wisp can be matched by hundreds of observations reported in bygone years. Strange to say, most of the information we now possess about this phenomenon?to say nothing of much misinformation?has been handed down from the days of our great-grandfathers. Science was once vastly more interested than it appears to be today in observing the will-o'-the-wisp and trying to explain it, and many circumnstantial descriptions by compentent observers were published in the first half of the nineteenth century and earlier.
These records do not correspond altogether with popular traditions concerning the phenomenon. It was usually described as having a flame-like appearance and being suspended a few feet above the ground; but, though it might move about within a limited radius, it did not display its proverbial fonuess for flitting ahead of the traveler who sought to overtake it. It was generally difficult of access, because it usually appeared over marshes, but several persons, including some professional scientific men, reported viewing it at close range and even touching it. There was one celebrated case in which Professor Knorr, of Kiev, held the ferrule of his cane in one of the flames for a quarter of an hour without its becoming sensibly heated. Another observer, Major Blesson, was able, though with difficulty, to light a piece of thin paper by holding it in a will-o'-the-wisp; but nearly all the evidence of that period indicated that the lights possessed litle or no heat.
Just why the science of our own day tends to ignore this phenomenon?is not at all clear. The fact remains that few modern scientific books even mention it, and the attempts in general reference books to explain it in terms of chemistry evoke smiles from the chemist. Nobody has ever photographed it or examined its light with a spectroscope. So far as I am aware, only one living scientist?Professor Léon Dumas, in Belgium?claims to have reproduced it successfully in the laboratory, and his recipe for artificial will-o'-the-wisp, when tested a few years ago at the United States Bureau of Standards, failed to produce effects agreeing with the usual descriptions of the natural phenomenon.
Probably the best guess that can now be made as to its nature is that the real will-o'-the-wisp?as distinguished from innumerable things that have been mistaken for it?is not, as has generally been supposed, due to the burning of unidentified gases in the air but to some kind of luminescence, or so-called "cold light," akin to the many alread well known of science, which incldues the light of the firefly, the "fox fire" of decaying wood and the splendid displays of luminosity seen in the ocean. Professor Fernando Sanford may have hit the nail on the head when he suggested in "The Scientific Monthly" of October, 1919, that the apparent flames of the will-o'-the-wisp consist of luminescent bacteria carried up from marshes and wet grounds by rising bubbles of gas.
The neglect of this long-standing puzzle by contemporary men of science is all the more remarkable because of the large amount of attention they have devoted to another luminous manifestation, similar in some respects to the will-o'-the-wisp and equally mysterious. It is seen mostly during thunderstorms and is called "ball lightning".
Nearly a century has elapsed since a distinguished French authority, François Arago, classified this phenomenon as a specles of lightning and collected all the available information about it in his time. Nowadays not a year passes without the publication of numerous circumstancial reports of its occurence. Here is a case described last summer by Professor R. W. Wood, of John Hopkins University:
A house at the seashore was twice struck by lightning within fifteen minutes during a severe thunderstorm. The second discharge melted the telephone wire just outside the house, followed the wires into the cellar under the kitchen, and was succeeded by the appearance of a luminous ball in the kitchen about three feet from the floor. The cook was facing the place where the ball appeared and was near enough to touch it, though she prudently retrained from doing so. She sold Professor Wood that it was yellow like a flame, about five inches in diameter, and was spinning like a top. She was unable to say whether the ball exploded or disappeared silently, as she made a hasty retreat by way of the cellar stairs. On returning she found the kitchen full of a smoky haze, and noticed a strong smell, which she described as "acid-like." No marks of the lightning could be found in the kitchen, but there had evidently been a heavy electrical disturbance below the floor.
This is one of many well authenticated cases in which ball lightning has been observed indoors, but outdoor examples are more common. The ball is sometimes first seen emerging from the base of a cloud, or, again, it may apparently from in midair, or first appear resting on some object. Frequently, but not always, its appearance follows immediately after a stroke of ordinary lightning. The balls are most often described as reddish, but are sometimes yellow, blue or white. A hissing, humming or fluttering sound is frequently noted. A ball may be visible from a fraction of a second to several minutes, and it may disappear silently, or with a slight crack, or with a deatening explosion.
The world's leading students of lightning have sought to explain this strange by-product of the thunderstorm, but without sucess. One of these authorities, Dr. G. C. Simpson, director of the British Meteorological Office, has devoted special attention to the subject, but he declared not long ago in a lecture at Oxford University that "not even the beginning of an explanation" was in sight.
In this country Dr. W. J. Humphreys, of the Weather Bureau, who has been garthering records and descriptions of ball lightning for several years, recently addressed an appeal to the public, through newspapers all over the country for reports of cases observed during the present thunderstorm season. Dr. Humphreys's questionnaire runs as follows:
By whom seen: whether others also saw it; when (date) and where (geographical location); stage (beginning, middle or close) of storm; indoors or out; if indoors how it came in and how it departed; single or many; duration; color; size; shape, nature of outline (sharp or blurry); noise; color; fixed in position or moving; if moving, whether with or independent of wind; direction of motion (vertical, inclined or horizontal); velocity; kind of motion (smooth or jumpy): effects produced; anything else that was observed in connection with it. Observers are asked to send their reports to this address; Dr. W. J. Humphreys. United States Weather Bureau, Washington, D. C.
Photographs of the phenomenon are especially desired. I know of only two cases in which it is said to have been photographed, and in both there is doubt about the authenticity of the pictures. Here, then, is an opportunity for some amateur photographer to render a unique service to science.
Among the many conjectures put forth concerning this mystery one that seems, at present, rather plausible is that some, at least, of the so-called balls of fire reported to have been seen in thundery weather were brush discharges of electricity from bits of dust or other light material floating in the air. This proposed explanation would identify ball lightning with a well known phenomenon of atmospheric electricity called St. Elmo's Fire, or corposants.
The ordinary manifestations of St. Elmo's fire, though weird enough in appearance, are hardly mysterious from a scientific standpoint. They are most often seen at the tips of masts and spars of ships, and at points and angles of various elevated objects on shore, including lightning rods, church spires and the ridgepoles of buildings. Some of the finest examples are observed on lofty and isolated mountains; not only during thunderstorms but often during snowstorms. They are due in alla these cases to a leakage of electricity from charged objects into the surrounding air. Such leakages give similar effects in the laboratory and often at night form a violet "corona" along an electric transmission line carrying high-voltage current.
Brush discharges of this character are usually only from a fraction of an inch to a few inches in length, but they are at times so numerous as to form, collectively, a brillant display. In February, 1929, they were so bright on the summit of Pike's Peak that, seen from Colorado Springs, fourteen miles away, they were mistaken for signals made by bikers on the winterbound mountaintop and an airplane was sent to investigate. A magnificent display was witnessed during the great eruption of Krakatoa, in 1883, when the spars of ships for scores of miles around this East indian volcano were studded with corposants. One captain, who was ten miles from the eruption, told of "a peculiar pinky flame in the eruption coming from the clouds, which seemed to touch the mastheads and yardarms." In a case reported from Austria a few years ago thousands of supposed corposants were seen at one time in a mountainside forest.
In the rarefield air of great altitudes the discharges attain a greater size than elsewhere. Hence, in the lack of a better explanation, science has tentatively classified as a variety of St. Elmo's fire the marvelous glows and rays of light that frequently crown the summits of the Andes, as seen mainly from the western coast and the adjacent ocean, and are now usually described an "Andes lightning," or "Andes lights." During the warmer season of the year it is not uncommon to see the mountaintops continuously glowing, through the night, while occasionally great beams, like those of a gigantic searchlight, shoot up into the sky. The natives have long regarded these lights as the reflection of glowing lava in the craters of volcanoes, but there seems to be no doubt that they are electric discharges of some sort. Apparently the lofty mountains serve as great lightning rods, from which currents of electricity stream off into the air.
"Andes lights" have been reported from the Alps, and at one time this weird phenomenon was supposed to occur in the mountains of North Carolina. Thanks, however, to the investigations of the United States Geological Survey, we now know that the so-called "Brown Mountain Lights" of that state are nothing more mysterious than the headlights of distant locomotives and automobiles.
Apparently St. Elmo's fire assumes a number of forms differing from those usually described in the textbooks. Stories are told of the branches of trees outlined against the evening sky in a glow of bluish light, which may have been due to this phenomenon. The hair and manes of horses have been brightly illuminated especially when wet with rain. A German meteorologist, Dr. Walter Knoche, who visited high points in the Andes to study the spectacular discharges already mentioned, tells of seeing "flames as big as houses" sweeping over the lofty snowfields.
None of the many strange luminous phenomena that haunt the air is more mysterious than the one that has been famous for more than a century under the name of the "Fire Ship of Bay Chaleur." Twenty-five years ago Professor W. F. Ganong, the well known botanist, published all the information he was able to glean about this weird phenomenon through interviews with people dwelling along the bay in question, many of whom had repeatedly seen it. He left the mystery unsolved, and so it remains to this day.
The so-called "ship" is seen mostly over the waters of Bay Chaleur, Canada, but the same object or something in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in Northumberland Straits. It occurs not only in summer but also over the ice in winter. People have gone out in boars to examine it, but it has always disappeared as they approchaed and reappeared in its original position after they passed some distance beyond. Its usual outline is roughly hemispherical with the flat side to the water. At times it simply glows without much change of shape, but at other times it rises into slender moving columns, giving an appearance not unlike that of the flaming rigging of a ship. Its visibility is generally regarded by the residents of the Bay Chaleur country as a sign of stormy weather.
Professor Ganong, in his published account of this extraordinary object, says that "its origin is probably electrical, and it is very likely a phase of the phenomenon known as St. Elmo's fire." He offers, however, no explanation of its unusual appearance and suggests no reason why its occurence should be limited to a particular region.