Subject: Earth Lights Stuff
From: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@...>
Date: 21 Feb 2001 16:54
Hi Everyone, I'd like to welcome all new members to the group (we now total five...), and extend my thanks to you all for your interest. Just to prove that this mailing list is for discussion as well as site updates, I'm posting a few ideas about the earth light phenomenon that I've had recently... Firstly, as usual there has been no major updates that I'm aware of in the field of Earth Light research, just as there isn't every year (although I admit I don't keep my ear to the ground as much as I used to). Also, there isn't much in the way of new Web sites devoted to the phenomenon, although I have stumbled across a couple of updates on our old favourites: Ghosts.org and Project Hessdalen. Still, I can't help but feel that the field of earth light research is isolated due to the obscurity of the events, and the lack of promotion or investigation of the genre. I'm quite surprised that the site has got over 7000 hits now, given that I rarely see it mentioned elsewhere. Anyway, enough moaning, and on to the topic at hand: ALP. The most major development that I have been cogitating on is the fact that most of the major American sites center on railroad tracks: and when those tracks are removed, the lights disappear too. This has happened too many times (Maco, Crossett, to name a couple) to be of mere coincidence, and leads me to conclude that the railways either a) attract ALP, or b) propagate it. Maybe they do both. Lately, theories and studies of earth lights have all come to the same "electromagnetic plasma generated by the earth" conclusions. If this is indeed the case, then we might be able to work out what role the tracks have in transmitting the electricity from the ground into an electromagnetic loop of plasma in the atmosphere. The ground is fairly alive with electricity anyway, and small tectonic strains can have large effects: no problem there. So let's say that the electricity gets transmitted to the surface. It now needs to leap out into the air and form a ball. This seems highly unlikely, which is where I believe the railroad tracks come in... If the tracks themselves become electrified, it may be possible for a spark to somehow bridge the gap between them: if the conditions are just perfect. This might not even be visible, only in the form of a potential difference being exchanged by the tracks themselves... now, if this can sufficiently ionise the air around the tracks, then this energy might somehow get caught, being fed by the tracks, and eventually form a ball of glowing plasma that can break free and wander about. Problems with this theory? Well, that's a big gap to cross, so the potential difference would need to be *huge*... I think it's something like 1000V per metre, so call it something like 2000V. However, I remember from my college days that even a mere Van De Graff generator can get up to 100,000 volts on a dry day. Maybe the ground could generate such voltages? The current would not have to be all that strong. If there is an unusually still piece of air above the tracks, it might be able to form both the connection for the electricity, and the container for the glowing plasma. The conditions needed to make such an event happen would be highly exceptional: as mirrored by the fact that the lights are so rare. Well, I'm clutching at straws a bit here, I admit, but these lights must be formed *somehow*, and I'm sure that the railroad tracks have some part in that. The microclimate around the lights seems to be inextricably linked to their characteristics, and that is a very important line of investigation for us to pursue. Anyway, I'll probably be posting some of this to the site later (most likely under "theories") because there are more people looking at the site than there are on this list :-) -- Kindest Regards, Sean B. Palmer @prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> . [ :name "Sean B. Palmer" ] :hasHomepage <http://infomesh.net/sbp/> .