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.)"

Comments

Weird...

[MSFanBoi2]

I didn't know there were major highways with automobiles running around on them back when the lights first were seen...

Video Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Marfa Video

Not Very Comprehensive; Duplicate Study

[Pulsar]

I wouldn't be surprised if the 'official viewing area' the UTD students used in the study, supposedly constructed to keep tourists from wandering all over private property in search of a better view (but most likely constructed for the revenue), was designed so that the majority of the 'Marfa Lights' visibile from the viewing area are car headlights, as discussed in the UTD study. It ensures visible 'Marfa Lights' every night, and will keep the hype and the legend alive, in turn keeping some level of tourist dollars flowing into Marfa.

However, their study does not resolve or even address one problem with this conclusion - the lights have been visible long before cars were common, or even available, in the area. Furthermore, the students documented the lights were car headlights from US Highway 67 - however, Highway 67's west end was in Dallas when the highway was originally built; Highway 67 did not extend into west Texas and the Marfa area until 1930.

The best part is, this study has been done before, in March 1975, by another Society of Physics Students, who reached a slightly different, but similar conclusion:

Don Witt, then a physics professor at Sul Ross University in Alpine, coordinated a monumental effort to locate the lights' source. Using the Sul Ross Society of Physics Students, the Big Bend Outdoor Club comprised of community members, and local pilots, short-wave radio amateurs, and a few outside professionals, Witt's group was positively unable to form any sort of solid conclusion. They did say, however, that sometimes the lights that people claimed were "Marfa Lights," were really artificial lights from area ranches or automobile headlights merely passing behind unseen obstructions along distant Highway 67, which winds through the Chinati Mountains between Marfa and Presidio.

So some of the lights are car headlights - this was already known and accepted, I'm pretty sure. I'm disappointed with their 'grant from the Schlumberger corp.' mentioned in the PDF and the equipment they had access to at UTD, these students couldn't do a more in-depth study or come up with a more comprehensive conclusion. Sounds like a group of students at UTD wanted a 4 day all-expenses paid road-trip to one of the more beautiful parts of Texas, down near Big Bend National Park.

Then again, as a UT-Arlington (UTA) alumnus, I may be a little biased against our cross-Metroplex rivals.

Re:Do you really need lasers?

[Pulsar]

People have, actually, people have 'walked towards the lights' in one form or another ever since they were first reported in the 1800's. From one of the links in the original post:

The unexpected lights alarmed the cowboys, who thought the Apaches were on the move, and they quickly doused their own campfires. But they determined to investigate the area in the daylight. After spending an uncomfortable night huddled under blankets for warmth on the cold desert floor, dawn found them on horseback, combing the area for any signs of an Indian encampment. They found none.

All day, the men searched along the base of the Chinati Mountains and the mesa between their camp and where the lights had been. They found no evidence that Indians had been anywhere in the area. No tracks, no doused campfires, no nothing. But the next night and the next after that, they again saw the strange lights.

As well as...

An unscientific method was tried in the 1980's by Dallas journalist, Kirby Warnock. Warnock's family had settled in the Trans-Pecos region just north of Big Bend country more than one hundred years ago, and he first saw the lights in 1963, when he was eleven-years-old and his brother was eight. He and his brother decided that the reason no one ever got close to the lights was because they used motor vehicles, such as airplanes, jeeps, and cars. The two men thought that if they headed out on foot across the desert, they just might be able to sneak up on the lights.

One summer, they assembled their gear and a camera, and at dusk, started walking. They tried for four hours to get close to the lights, but it was like walking up to a mirage. The more they walked, the further the lights moved away. Warnock reported that he thought the lights were "trying to frustrate and thwart us. It was like they knew what we were doing and were teasing us by staying just a little ahead of us." It is a fact that distances are deceiving in the desert. The Warnocks could not tell if they were looking at a light as big as a tire or one as big as a cantaloupe. They just could not get close enough to get a good idea of how big the lights actually were.

The lights seem to either evade or confuse anyone who attempts to walk/drive/fly closer to them, and sometimes they simply vanish if someone seems to get 'too close'. There's even been occasional reports of the lights 'chasing' a car or plane traveling through the region, but no one has ever reported getting close to any of the lights successfully.