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Marfa Lights Explained
billsoxs writes "The Marfa lights are ghostly lights that have been observed for years around Marfa TX (near Big Bend). They have been the subject of curiosity , a source of tourism and scientifically studied a number of times. Now a group of physics students from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have use small lasers and traffic sensors to show that these lights are most likely headlights from cars on a distant highway. The publication is in the Society of Physics Students website. The PDF of the article is here. (Unfortunately the related video is no longer available on the web but more stuff is here.)"
I didn't know there were major highways with automobiles running around on them back when the lights first were seen...
For a while now, and I'm rather glad it's been explained.
r y/bluelight.htm
Now if they'd move on to the Blue Light Cemetery, I'd be more interested.
http://www.cemeteries-of-tx.com/Etx/Harris/cemete
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
So, it's like an episode of Scooby-Doo basically, everyone knows the lights are cars but the local area has used it as sort of fun way of attracting tourists and they even have a festival around the event. See http://www.qsl.net/w5www/marfa.html . So, it's kind of sad that these students went to this amount of trouble to explain away the lights.
I think it's interesting that the local legend has it that the lights have been there before cars and that you hear a tuning fork sound in one ear. Obviously these little details have been added to add the little bit of doubt to keep the charade going and to draw some more money into town.
It's a fun thing... let it go, as I'm sure the people down there will not be accepting of even a scientific study like this.
Yep, in 1883 it was all the craze to install those Bi-Xenon headlights on your SUV...
Religion has to answer the "why".
If one subscribes to the premise that religions are superstition, then there is no "why" at all.
In fact, to even begin to ask why, you have to suppose that there was some purpose for it in the first place, which automatically implies the existence of an intelligence or reasoning entity that designed the purpose.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We have a local legend about a "ghost lights cemetary" just south of Springtown, Texas. I've taken a look and it is indeed caused by small particles in the tombstone material that is more reflective than the rest of the stone. It reflects the pale glow on the horizon of the nearby town's lights at night. Quite eerie the first time you see it and locals insist that supernatural things happen there but the phenomenon is easily explanable. Tombstones further away give the most interesting effect as the light seems to eminate away from any observable objects, as if floating in mid-air.
Really weird optical effects happen in cold air areas too - like the false suns seen in Antarctica at times.
Next one - crop circles. Drunken Australian tourists with sticks and rope in at least a few of the early cases.
ID is just a symptom of general ignorance and superstition which is becoming common. On Friday a geophysics student about to start an honors year helping out in her holidays was telling me that CRT computer screens give you the same amount of radiation as a medical X-ray after a week of exposure - of some sort of radiation like X-rays only different and just as damaging - told to her by a doctor apparantly. My explanation of how a CRT works and how an X-ray tube works only got as far as mentioning amounts of energy involved, intensity and target materials before I could tell she thought I was lying to her because I have an agenda to not replace CRTs with LCDs due to cost. Even many of those in science studies have fallen victim to snake oil sociopaths and see technical folk as Moorlocks who will eat their babies to keep technology going.
Back to pseudo-science on TV - one thing that pissed me off intensely was the "roads that go into the sea" crap about Easter Island on one TV program made decades after they were shown to be boat ramps by scuba divers.